#so it automatically takes a hit to its integrity and meaning. not much but significant.

[eerna]

i’ve been back on my hadestown bullshit (listening to the album on repeat) and you make such good points about the lyrics being dumbed down and how it does a disservice to the narrative and characters. it’s such an artful, creative show that constantly adapts and changes so why not take some risks with lyrics that may take a few times to sink in? that’s the beauty of listening to it through many times. i catch something new that just punches me in the gut each time (also love your hadestown art it’s so good)

Thank youuu glad you like my stuff :3 Yeah!! I think ultimately it comes down to two things, confidence and Broadway requirements. Anais Mitchell isn't hiding how much she struggled writing the show and balancing between artsy, well crafted, and understandable. She also stated many things have been cut because the show was too long for Broadway and they were required to trim it. To both I say, HUH?? First off, Anais Mitchell honed her craft to perfection. No other musical ever managed to drive me to tears with moodsetting "oohs". She wrote a godly love song that sounds like a godly love song. She deserves all the confidence in the WORLD. But she also never hid that Hadestown is a very personal story influenced by her experience as a free artist, so on the other hand, I totally get that no amount of success can ever truly heal your inner critic, and she will always keep trying to adjust her work. As for the second point, I know at least some of the dumbing down is because the audiences complained. I saw Hadestown live 5 years after seeing a bootleg of it, and in those 5 years they added so many cheap jokes and dishonest tension breaks it is Crazy. But I DID notice in older bootlegs that people laughed at inappropriate times, they seemed like they expected something funny to be happening in every scene because they went to a musical and so picked some really weird spots, which doesn't happen in any of the recordings of the new jokey edition. So in dumbing itself down, the musical mamaged to become more understandable to the audience at large. In fact, even after all the changes, at the theater I overheard people talking in the pause, and they agreed the show is "too confusing" and "they can't tell what exactly is happening and if it is real or not". I can imagine that is a frustrating experience when you paid a good chunk of money to see a show, but also bro, google is Right There. Most people just don't have the will to sit down and listen to a pretty piece of media multiple times to figure it out! And sadly shows can't survive only on those who do! To bring this long ramble to a close, we are right back to art existing under capitalism and how one can't simply make GOOD art, they need to make PROFITABLE art, and that is pretty sucky

[aaluminiumas]

Millstones

Shanks openly relished the pirate life: he could name one hundred reasons to become a buccaneer, and that oh-so-proverbial One Piece every rookie dreamt about wouldn’t be listed among the first thirty. This man loved listening to waves rustling; he could spend hours admiring the landscape while holding the ship’s wheel and staring into nowhere – but with the same zeal he threw himself into battle standing up for his friends and crewmates. And a good fight is sure to be celebrated by a downpour of sake, a loud burst of laughter and a couple of brazen jokes around the campfire somewhere far away. Isn’t it what happiness is all about?

He long forgot the place he called home. Was it a little windswept archipelago somewhere in the middle of the Grand Line? Or, perhaps, a bustling city that never sleeps? Or, probably, a tiny village on the outskirts of the Goa Kingdom where he tended to return in attempt to remember the good old times and to order a mug of sake while singing a song unanimously with other frequenters?..

Red-haired Shanks grunted under his breath and turned the ship to the left. Out of the corner of the eye the man caught the glimpse of a sea king coming to the surface. Oddly enough, this one didn’t pay the slightest attention to them: the creature had either managed to devour another crew chasing Gol D. Roger’s treasure, or simply took no notice of the vessel. Making sure the ruthless animal swam away, the pirate consulted his log pose – and in a couple of seconds he spotted the familiar sky-line of the Goa Kingdom: a city surrounded by a thick wall with a swarm of windmills in the distance. They moved in the same fashion, clockwise, peacefully and steadily, filling the air with quiet and mollifying creaking everybody was accustomed to. Even the fragrance of this wonderful place was unique: clear, slightly salty and dusty as if abundant in flour that never trickled out of the millstones completely.

Long time ago – a whole eternity ago! – he saved Luffy from a sea king and lost his arm in the process. A ridiculous price for a funny kid who managed to create problems whenever he went naively smiling all the way. Shanks couldn’t put his finger on his behavior: how dared this child roughly as tall as his leg challenge someone much stronger! But despite his obvious paternal affection for the brave boy, there was definitely something else that attracted him to the tavern not far from the biggest windmill.

Although Shanks didn’t have his own kids, he as well as his crew enjoyed talking to Luffy days on end telling unbelievable stories about their adventures. The lad whose eyes were beaming with anticipation caught every word evincing sheer awe and reverence. Listening to the pirates, he imagined himself to be one, and didn’t even doubt he would be lucky enough to get into a bit of a scrape to fight back any offender.

But Luffy wasn’t the only one who delighted pirate tales. The hostess of the tavern, calm and light-hearted Makino, dwelled on every word spoken as if she herself were a little girl. She knew she wouldn’t exchange her settled life for the fierce and unpredictable ocean but the exciting fables soon interwove into her daily routine turning into a significant part of the world she lived in. Every evening Shanks dropped in at the tavern, ordered a whole barrel of sake for his crew – and laughed, recalling the most mind-blowing events that took everybody’s breath away. These were miraculous days, weren’t they?

The red-haired man grinned to himself recollecting the night when Makino, who just started wiping off plates, ventured to ask an odd question – he needed a solid minute to ponder over it and give her a decent reply.

“Shanks-san,” she called him quietly and put the plates on a shelf feeling sheepish, “Aren’t you…” the woman raised her eyes to audaciously look at him, “Aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you scared at all?”

He thought for a second, sipped on his drink and adjusted the straw hat that hadn’t yet made its way to Luffy. “Afraid,” he finally deduced and pushed his mug aside, “But not for myself.”

Shanks turned his head in the direction of his friends stuffing themselves with meat and arguing about mermaids. Someone began to sing – slightly out of tune, –and the rest cheerfully took up, though not unanimously at all. The woman got perplexed for a moment or two – and, amazed to a fault, kept staring at the visitor in the straw hat not fully comprehending what he meant by this.

The man laughed, “Just imagine what kind of mess Luffy can make when we sails away! He’s ready to challenge a sea king to prove his strength and audacity,” Shanks bestowed a broad smile on her folding his hands on the table, “But I believe one day he’ll become more cauti–”

At this very moment, ‘the cautious kid’ caused a huge knife to fall. Luffy was about to yell at the top of his lungs – but immediately noticed the heaven-sent hand of the red-haired man and closed his cry-contorted mouth. His orbs sparkled – the boy got charmed again.

However, it wasn’t the only time Makino asked bizarre questions: she was genuinely enthralled by his lifestyle even though she never wanted to be a pirate. He liked that disclosed interest, curiosity to the foreign world of his, and bit by bit such discussions created a tight bond of friendship between them which somewhat impelled the crewmates to shamelessly tease their captain – not unkindly, of course. His comrades didn’t mean anything bad – they simply relished the sight of the normally collected hostess who now smiled meekly and blushed slightly. Taking it as a certain sign, the captain cut the jokes short with a loud laugh and another mug of sake.

Thing ran their course.

It’s been quite some time since then… Ace died almost two years ago, Luffy is already up in arms, and the millstones are working just as steadily, turning wheat into flour. When did he visit the place last time?.. It was simply indecent on his part considering the amount of time he spent there. Is the mayor just as grumpy and meticulous as he used to be? And what about that bandit, Dadan, Luffy told so much about? Is she doing fine? And the tavern where he hung out so often with his crew, is it in the same place?..

For a moment the red-haired man yielded to a vague feeling of nostalgia: the reminiscences goaded him to squeeze out a lopsided grin, and the decision he’d recently made, got its shape: the yonko was absolutely sure of the actions he was about to perform.

“Welcome to the Goa Kingdom!” he declared in a stentorian voice turning to face his boatswain ready to comply with the ensuing command. “Time to have some fun, guys!”

This order was met by a loud explosion of shenanigans: they’d just savored a good fight, and now they were eager to live it up.

*** “Makino been at ‘ome fo’ a week already,” a sprightly old lady reported to Shanks while giving hearty slaps to presumptuous pirates. “’er boy got ill. But drop in at ‘er place anyway, she’ll be ‘appy to see ya. It isn’t too fa’ from ‘ere… Bah! Where ya goin’ bone’ead?!” the old crone quacked and hit someone with a beer mug she was holding. “So, just ‘ound the corne’… those gates. Damn you, Satan!”

The red-haired pirate grinned at the educational methods that old woman employed, gave her a golden coin and left the tavern. His feet brought him directly to the neat small house with huge flower beds in front. The man didn’t get what the bartender meant by ‘her boy got ill’ but the galvanic yearning for the past demanded new memories and Makino indeed was an integral part of the time he spent here and needed so desperately. Shanks automatically noticed that he became the center of attention: those who didn’t know he used to visit the village raked their brains as to why one of the yonkos decided to come while his friends, along with the mayor, were genuinely joyous to see him and greeted the man asking for how long he planned to stay. There were others, suspicious ones, who revealed their growing displeasure and apprehension – but they tended to avoid any eye-contact with the guest.

Makino’s cottage looked even smaller when he approached it: the house reminded him of the tiny huts he saw at the Pigmy Island but seemed solid enough to handle a powerful hurricane. Shanks couldn’t recollect whether he ever paid visits to his friends: there was no point doing it as they met at the tavern every evening to discuss recent local news And now… he felt almost embarrassed.

He knocked – and heard a clear voice.

“Wait a minute!” Makino was certainly busy, “I’m ̶ Shanks-san?!”

Opening the door, Makino froze at the sight of the man at the threshold: the young woman was holding a hefty bundle with a sniffing baby – with the free hand, she tried to do her hair.

“Are you here for long..?” she attempted to atone, her lips smiling irresolutely.

“No… I dunno.”

She adjusted her son to hold him comfortably, pushed the door open and stepped aside letting the guest in. Despite their common past where no one hid anything from the other, currently both of them felt perplexed and confused: Shanks realized he came amiss, and Makino simply didn’t expect to see the man she used to read about emerging in her tiny cottage. Since he became a yonko, she stopped waiting for his loud visits: a man of importance like him – even if a pirate, – probably had more significant affairs to deal with than singing songs somewhere in a godforsaken village.

Closing the door behind him, the young woman unswathed the parcel and made sure the baby felt better. In a moment, she placed him on the floor and gave him his favorite toy – a plush parrot which was immediately seized by a viselike grip of two chubby hands.

“How you doing?” the pirate asked nonchalantly perusing the modest, spick and span room and finally swiveling his eyes to look at the roly poly tyke crawling around. “What a swashbuckling lady replaced you,” he mentioned with a short laugh. “She’s a real smasher. Can kick anyone out of the pub!”

“Oh… Kagurumi-san… she has her own approach to problem clients,” Makino gave out a small but nonetheless genuine smile bit by bit getting accustomed to his company and his manners that didn’t change at all. “What about you? Have you seen Luffy? I’ve read something in a newspaper but… since he… since… that day I heard a number of things but I am not sure what exactly should be trusted.”

“Luffy’s fine. He’s coped with Ace’s death and is ready to make a scoop and win all front pages,” Shanks said firmly instantly getting the facts straight and calling it the way he saw it – he had to be the reasonable one even though Makino had a hard time speaking about the situation. “Don’t worry about him: he’s already striving to get in trouble.” The yonko broke into a smile, sat down on the sofa and pointed to the boy with a subtle nod of his head: the kid had been playing with the dark cloth of Shanks’ coat probably considering it a better toy. “What’s his name?” “Kenta. Kenta, don’t touch it.” Her delicate hand tenderly brushed across the plump fingers. “No.”

“Why not?” the man’s smile grew even broader, and he sat the boy in his lap. “How old ‘re ye, pal?”

“Not… too much.”

The conversation dragged. Makino clearly felt reluctant to discuss her personal life: she was either afraid of mocking and misunderstanding, or instinctively realized she had fallen in love with the man who kept her company during those long nights at the tavern filled with stories about other islands and seas. She loved his tales and his smile; she adored his laugh and sonorous voice – she even found herself enchanted by his manners sufficiently graceful for a pirate. But the woman never thought it could go further anytime soon. Don’t friends see each other as beautiful, kind people? Don’t they acknowledge the best in one another? Don’t they admire each other?..

The woman sat there, motionless and calm, but it was obvious she couldn’t ease the tension even though she tried to seem friendly.

“If I’m unwanted here, I’ll go,” Shanks spotted her nervousness and adjusted the collar of his coat, evidently about to stand up. “We happened to be around, so of course everyone was eager to remember the best moments of the past… to have a look at good ol’ Windmill. I’m sorry if I meddled in.” he said in the same light-hearted voice not holding any grudge against her.

She replied by a tender, smooth gesture – the woman put her hand onto his shoulder. Kenta, not paying attention to his mother’s agitation, examined the stranger awkwardly standing up and trying to reach the flaming red hair. The man looked so extraordinary – he never met anyone like this among his mom’s guests.

“We all were shocked when… this happened,” the smile faded away for a second, and the eyes got hazy. “I mean, Ace and Whitebeard's death. When Garp came, even Dadan wasn’t her usual self – you remember, that mountain bandit who raised Luffy and… the rest.” She didn’t dare call Ace by the name the second time. “But bit by bit everything’s falling into place, and… if Luffy did it, we will succeed too.” The woman stated in the voice laced with confidence, her bright eyes staring at Shanks. “The whole world is reconstructing, and we are not an exception, fortunately or unfortunately. We have to adapt as well. Thankfully, Goa isn’t the place every single pirate darts to conquer, so everything’s more or less quiet here.” Makino eventually managed to get rid of stiffness. “What about you? How are you, Shanks-san?..”

“Whitebeard’s death is definitely a tragedy for everyone,” he drawled pensively automatically playing with Makino’s son. “And it did multiply the number of problems to deal with. But we’re still trying to live the same way and to do whatever we did before the new era: to have fun, to fight and to drink.” He let out another laughter and brought Kenta up to his shoulder. “Look, what a rider you have here!”

The boy giggled and hugged the pirate by the neck.

Makino slightly blushed. “He… likes you. He doesn’t normally trust people so easily but you seem to make a good impression. I’m afraid he’s going to chase you just like Luffy!” she shook her head in a histrionic reproach.

“So Windmill is going to have a pirate dynasty? Our future Pirate King will be happy to know there’s someone to inherit the skills!”

All of a sudden the mood lightened by itself: Makino released herself and relaxed, cheerfully laughing at the crass jokes he always spilled. The balance restored into the universe: the woman no longer shied away from the guest and honestly replied to his simple questions; she even mentioned what she used to be doing before his visit to the village. He listened to her carefully catching every word, japed and reminisced on certain occasions that came to his mind. Sometimes, making Kenta participate in the confabulation, Shanks questioned him as well just to hear a short ‘yea’ or displeased sniff.

The day was declining, but even after lulling her son to sleep, Makino didn’t intend to part ways with the man who returned just to say hello and to check up on her.

“Have you… rented anything?” she requested quietly, taking off her bandanna protecting her head from the burning sun. “If not, you can stay over. Of course if you don’t mind.” She hurried to add wondering whether she’d gone too far.

Shanks quirked his eyebrows and scratched the tip of his nose. “Why not?.. If anything I should pay a little bit more attention to my closest friend. In fact, I was kinda scared I frightened you.” He noticed undoing the laces of his coat.

She emitted a soft laugh grabbing the outerwear off his hand and hanging it on a peg. “I’m not afraid of you, I’m afraid of the changes you’re bringing along,” she answered simply. “But now I understand that we are… protected. We have nothing to be scared of with a friend like you,” Makino said in whisper, in a barely audible tone. Not switching on the lights, she dared give the guest a bear hug – even though it was evanescent and ephemeral, she managed to express her emotions the best way she could – with innate modesty and chastity. “Thank you. If only had I known how to thank you properly…”

Shanks caught her fingers and pressed the narrow pale hand to his lips. “You have provided a shelter. A pirate wouldn’t even dream about a bigger thing.” He let go off her hand and pulled away from her, his smile friendly and cordial and yet exposing some unknown fatigue Makino had never come across before. 

“Good night, Makino. I am glad to know we are friends regardless our long separation. You know, it’s so disrespectful of us to keep each other in the dark. But we didn’t have a choice!” he made a helpless gesture with his hand and disappeared in the room she had prepared for him to immediately fall into deep slumber.

And the hostess after putting her son’s toys in the box, shook her head and covered Shanks with a blanket: the nights may grow cold, and he certainly had enough of chilling wind on board. He deserved the comfort of the settled life he willingly rejected – he would never get used to that anyway…

[phoenotopia]

2020 March Update

Happy New Year! Well, I guess it's a bit late for that...

Much of what transpired in the past few months will fall under polish and bug-fixing. Will and I have a mutual friend who got married, so I had the occasion to visit Will to attend the wedding as well as have Will playtest the game in its most complete form yet. He logged 24 hours of playtime and just reached the entrance of the final dungeon. Then we had to call in for the night since it was 5 AM, and I had a flight to catch in the morning.

His completion rate where we stopped was 42% of Heart Pieces, 33% of Energy Gems, and 44% of Moonstones. So... I think we have a pretty lengthy game!

This will take a while to playtest & polish... Will's daytime profession is QA Engineer so he's pretty great at catching bugs. From his playtest, we jotted down 200+ items to fix/adjust. Some as small as a simple misspelling, and some more significant (like Gail being unable to jump when standing at the edge of a steep slope). I'm about half-way through fixing that list...

(Will’s living room where much playtesting was done)

Here are some other things we've accomplished in the past few months. A lot of it falls under polish and bug-fixing, which won't sound outwardly impressive, so I'll dive in a bit under the hood.

-------------------------- Item Balancing --------------------------

There are over 200 items in the game. Of which, 90+ are healing items. While much of their flavor text was already written, their stats weren't yet finally decided. So a large effort was spent to balance them as well as possible. Initially, I balanced items by observation (ex: "The player is relying on this item a lot, so I will nerf it...") Now, I've moved to a more systematic way of doing things. I made an equation that takes in all of an item's parameters, and spits out a score. The higher an item heals, the higher the score. The longer an item takes to consume, the lower the score. And so forth.

As usual, I used google spreadsheets, since they support equations. I could tweak the values of a healing item, and immediately see how its final score was affected. I also made use of automatic color formatting, so a field becomes highlighted red, if it's particularly bad, or green, if it's particularly good. Of course, the sheet is just a guideline. The aim wasn't to make all items have the same final score, but that they made sense for what they were and when you could get them. Late-game items tend to have higher overall scores versus early-game items. Some items, like doggy biscuits, have notoriously low scores across the board - as a joke!

-------------------------- Cooking Systems --------------------------

Another thing that had to be done with the healing items was finally determine their cooking sequences. 38 healing items could be cooked and will transform into something else. The way I specified that an item could be cooked was to add a a little snippet to an item's "meta data". An example would look something like, "COOK,57,62,ABXY,10,1.5,1".

In order, this specified the item_ID that would result on success (57), the item_ID that would result on failure (62), the button sequence (ABXY), the time you had to complete the sequence (10 seconds), how quickly the cursor should move (1.5x speed), and if the item multiplied on success (1). The system appears simple enough - but it was actually extremely inefficient!

For one, this system didn't allow random button sequences - all "berry fruits", when cooked would have the same button prompts and in the same order every time (ABXY). Initially, I thought having set button sequences would be a feature, but in practice, it was less fun. 

Two, this system wasn't human-readable at all. I'd see a sequence of numbers, forget what they were, and have to look them up over and over.

But the biggest problem was that you couldn't evaluate an item's cooking difficulty from these numbers without manual testing. At 1.5 cursor speed, how many times does the cursor pass the center panel in 10 seconds? Maybe that's 15 times... for a 4 button sequence, the player has 11 opportunities to miss - that's too wide a berth for failure. The system also had variable penalties - if you misspressed a button prompt you loss time on the cooking meter. If you didn't press anything, you missed the opportunity, but not the time - but the clock was still ticking, so you did lose time, just not as much. In the end, the difficulty of cooking each item was all over the place. It was also possible to create "unwinnable" scenarios if I made the button sequence too long, the time too short, or the cursor speed too slow. Testing each item manually to ensure doability was too tedious and unreliable - it was a mess!

Which is why, the underlying cooking system was revamped. The new meta data looks like : "COOK,57,62,seq_length,5,spd,1.5,ease_add,2". This is a lot more readable. Beyond the first 3 entries, the arguments could be specified in any order. And their meanings were easy to understand.

"seq_length,5" means a random button sequence of 5 will be generated (no need for me to personally generate it)

"spd,1.5" means the cursor moves at 1.5x speed. I could also leave this field out to get a default value of 1x cursor speed.

"ease_add,2" - the biggest improvement to the system is how we now approach difficulty. We streamlined a miss-press and a missed opportunity as the same level of "mistake", and difficulty is framed as, "how many mistakes is the player allowed to make and still have a successful result?" By default, the player is afforded the ability to make 2 mistakes, and "ease_add,2" bumps the number of allowable mistakes to 4. We then automatically calculate how much "time" the player should have to cook something based on its cursor speed, how long the button sequence is, and how many mistakes the player is allowed to make. This was a more sensible and efficient system that let me knock out all 38 healing item cook sequences in one sitting!

-------------------------- Badges Nearly Done --------------------------

As you may recall from the last update, I was working on implementing the badges.

Thinking up the badge and having its graphic drawn is just the first half. Underneath, the code also needs to be made to track all the relevant player stats - how many times the player fished, ate, got money, used a certain move, etc. Some badges require extra guards, because they can be spoofed. For instance, the "Treasure Hunter" badge is obtained when the player has collected XXXX RIN through the course of your journey. However, there is something like a "gold exchange" in the game, where you could circularly trade gold and RIN to boost this number artificially. It's important to guard against cases like those.

So far, 30 of 33 badges are implemented. The last three have to do with late-game things that have inter-dependencies that we're still figuring out. The Speed running badge for instance is still dependent on two things. One, I need to speed run the game a few times to see how fast it's possible to beat the game and decide finally what's a reasonable time-limit. Two, there's actually a time-keeping bug which can inflate the game time if the system is left in sleep mode. I don't expect either things will be too hard to figure out - just gotta find the time for it.

-------------------------- Script Extra Polished --------------------------

We continued to polish the script, which I thought was basically done before. We added some extra NPCs here and there, and fleshed out the world with lore text where it seemed appropriate. In the end, the game's script ballooned to over 100,000 words! Hah... It's definitely DONE now however!

Some interesting things I noted as I was polishing old text - there were quite a few instances where Gail talks. I began the game's development with the idea that Gail should definitely talk since I wanted her to be a more active participant in what she chose to do. But I discovered later that if Gail talks, but only talked a little, she comes off as a very reticent person. There's no middle lane here - you're either all in or all out.

If Gail was a silent protagonist, she still talked symbolically. She is understood to be talking based on how people react to her - kinda like Link. So that's the direction I went with in the end (again). When Gail has occasion to talk, it comes in the form of a player dialogue choice. She also has an inner voice when she needs to remind the player to do something.

Another reason I went with this direction, is for brevity. Take this exchange for instance: QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : Maybe. I can't make any promises...

If Gail is silent, I can reduce those 2 lines to 1. QUEST GIVER : Can you help me find this super rare ingredient? GAIL : ...

-------------------------- Business Taxes --------------------------

Not too exciting, but new year means I gotta do taxes for the business. They're a lot more complicated than personal taxes, and more expensive! Since the game hasn't sold anything, you would think there'd be nothing to file. Hah! If only... The business is there so we can act as a legal entity and record expenses for when we do start selling. I really want to focus on making games, but there’s a small percentage of it that is sometimes boring and dreadful (-_-) ... still it needs to be done.

------------- Why no Public Beta Testing? -------------

As you may have noticed, I haven't put out any public calls for testing help despite being at that stage. Some have offered to help, which I appreciate! But sadly, I cannot accept. Here's the story for that.

Two and a half years ago, I got my hands on a console dev kit - that's very exciting, so I hurriedly took the steps to convert my dev station to be console-capable. After about two weeks, I had the console version working and integrated into my workflow, so all appeared good...

4 Months later, an artist needed an updated PC build to test some new art assets, so I went to build a new PC version. We use Unity, so generally you just need to click your desired build target, and hit "build". However, I now discovered that by attaching the console "hooks" into my work environment, I could no longer build to PC... It was possible, from my end, to test the game from the dev station in dev mode, which was why it went undiscovered for so long.

I did try to excise the hooks, but proved unsuccessful after a day of work. I decided to take this as an opportunity to focus exclusively on the console version first, which afforded me some niceties. Knowing that there's a standardized control scheme meant I could make full use of the control stick for the fishing mini-game. I also didn't need to create a rebindable keys menu - which is a MUST for PC versions... Most importantly, it lets me focus on making the one version as good as possible before moving onto the next. I have NO idea how those other guys release on all platforms at once...

Chalk it up to inexperience. In my defense, this will be my first commercial release, so bear with me. Don't worry, I still plan to make the PC version! It's a bit unconventional, but we're just going to go in the reverse direction of the usual. Console first, then PC, then other consoles. Wherever it makes financial sense, there we will be. (Sorry Ouya!)

Back to the original question - that's why I haven't sent out any public calls for playtesting. Current playable builds of the game are locked to my console dev kit. So actual playtesting unfolds in a very closed setting. Like what I did with Will, I literally sit behind the playtester, breathe down their neck, and watch them play, taking notes all the while.

But since I'm observing the player directly, even just one playthrough nets me a TON of bugs and adjustment tasks. So it evens out I think.

-------------------------- Trailers, Release Dates, etc. --------------------------

Alright, get your frowns ready...

We finished two trailers, and they're raring to go. BUT! We can't show them yet... We're sort of at an awkward spot where we're waiting on some conversational threads to conclude. Say we win a slot in a show - that'd be a HUGE plus for us - but that may also be contingent on us having NOT shown anything substantial yet. The game in its unrevealed state is a negotiating chip. So we're trying to leverage that... and you can only do the reveal once...

We also want to have some "actionable" items in the trailer - a launch date you could mark on your calendar, a wishlist, a website you can visit, etc. So since those things aren't entirely lined up yet, we can't let the trailers rip just yet...

Right now, I can only say we're *aiming* for a late Q2/early Q3 launch. But I can't commit to anything concrete yet. As soon as we know, we'll happily sing it from the rooftops. I hope I can update this blog sooner with good news, but if things move slowly again, I'll send out the next "we're alive" update 2 months from now (end of April).

I know it's frustrating to have nothing major after so long still, so I captured some gameplay footage... May it sate your hungers!

-------------------------- Footage 1 : Fishing --------------------------

You've seen pictures of the fishing, but never video of it in action. Well, here it is!

(And right after I uploaded the video, I noticed there actually was a video of fishing before. D’oh)

The idea is simple. First, get the lure in front of a fish, and assuming the fish isn't scared, it will soon bite. Then begins a fight sequence, where your energy meter is pitted against the fish's energy meter. Whoever's energy outlasts the other's wins.

The fish's resistance is represented by a red moving circular subsection. You fight the fish by pushing the control stick and keeping it on the subsection, which will dart around and try to escape you. Bigger and tougher variants of fish will do a "shake" which will reverse the wheel. When the wheel is reversed, so too are the controls, so it gets extra tricky!

While fishing, your energy meter doesn't recover, so one of the ways you level up your fishing ability is by finding energy gems to increase your max energy. There's another way - but we'll keep that a secret.

-------------- Footage 2 : Kobold Boss Fight --------------

You can actually skip the next section if you'd prefer to be surprised and you find your hunger for info sated. That's how I prefer to consume the games that I know I'm going to get. If you're still hungering for info, and you don't mind the slight spoilers, then feel free to proceed!

The next video shows the new Kobold Boss fight. Let's take a moment to reflect on the old game's visuals and how far it's come...

(we've come a long way since the time of the flash game)

You'll notice the Kobold boss has a name now - Katash! He's a significant enough character that he's earned it. The second thing you'll notice is that he looks better!

Some people have humorously pointed out that the old boss looks like Wolf O'Donnel from Star Fox. There's a funny story behind that. Basically I asked an artist to draw me a space wolf. And the artist, whom I'm assuming wasn't familiar with Wolf O'Donnel, drew that - all of it - all the animations and everything. The first time I laid eyes on it, it was already done, so it was too late to ask for edits. So I just ran with it.

That was seven years ago. Nowadays, I know to involve myself more in the process. I ask for just the design first, and we don't move forward with animations until we're happy with the design. Life lessons!

By the way, if you like Katash’s personal boss theme, give it a lesson on Will's Sound cloud (LINK)

-------------------------- Fan Arts -------------------------- Lots of fan art came in over the past 3 months!

This one is a pixel animation made by Pimez, and shows Gail singing a Christmas carol in various parts of the game. So cute! Years ago, I too was making little animated gifs for my favorite games, so it really brings me back!

This one was made by cARTographer (twitter link) after a request by Deli_mage, so thank you both. Gail rocking stylish boots with a pose that shows confidence in her batting skills. Very anime - Love it!

Another submission of laptekosz of the Last Song of Earth area. Whereas the last picture depicted the night sky, now the orange trees are lit by a rising sun. Artfully done! Kinda makes me want to eat eggs. I hope you'll like the new Last Song of Earth area just as much :D

A new artist to the scene, Not_Quin, submitted two pictures, one of Gail and one of the Sand Drake re-imagined as a centipede. I'm always a fan of these re-imaginings! I like how it's spiky all over and appears to be wearing a skull mask. The Sand Drake is often pointed out to be too similar to Zelda's Dodongos, so maybe a long slithery body would have indeed served better. Fun fact, long ago, when we were working on Phoenotopia 2 in earnest, we actually had a giant man-eating worm planned - WIP animation depicted below. One day... one day...

Negativus Core made two cool new arts! I'm really impressed by their use of unique perspective! Having characters run towards the screen or reaching close to the screen from afar is tricky since the proportions get all distorted - but not an issue for Negativus Core! Love the blur on Gail to show speed, with 66 in focus - really skillfully done! And the cube. Amazing!

--------------------------

I'm really honored by the huge fan art community. Thank you all! 

[cdrforea]

Arlo Pro 3 Review: A Great Choice For Smart Home Security

New Post has been published on https://bestedevices.com/arlo-pro-3-review-a-great-choice-for-smart-home-security.html

Arlo Pro 3 Review: A Great Choice For Smart Home Security

"The Alro Pro 3 is a premium choice for smart home security."

Weatherproof, wireless cameras

High quality 2K video

Smart A.I. characteristics

Easy to install and use

Easy upgrade for existing Arlo owners

Minor performance issues with multiple 2K streams

A subscription is required for advanced features

Since its beginnings as a peculiar offshoot of Netgear, Arlo has found its rhythm with an excellent selection of wireless and weatherproof smart cams. The high-resolution Arlo Pro 2 tops our list of the best outdoor surveillance cameras in 2019 – and it is also a good choice for indoor surveillance.

In April Arlos became Ultra 4K came and marked the first shot in a next generation fight for the supremacy of the UHD Smart Cam. It offers superior sharpness and impressively large views, but a price tag of $ 300 per camera and a restrictive upgrade path for existing Arlo owners meant it wasn't a big hit.

The Arlo Pro 3 ($ 499 for a 2-camera kit with additional cameras at $ 199 each) is exactly between the two. While Arlo Ultra 4K's headline-breaking UHD resolution is lacking, it does offer a wider range of enhancements that – arguably – make it a better choice than Arlo's most expensive kit.

Terry Walsh / Digital Trends

This new model improves the Arlo Pro 2's 1080p image resolution to sharper, more vivid 2K (2560 x 1440 pixels) and supports a high dynamic range (HDR), which promises better video quality in very dark or bright areas. A 160 degree field of view may be narrower than the Arlo Ultra 4K's generous 180 degree field of view, but it's a significant advance over the 130 degrees offered by the outgoing model.

Additional functions are performed directly by the Arlo Ultra 4K. A built-in headlamp enables Arlo to claim color night vision support, while noise-canceling two-way audio and a siren in front of the camera further strengthen the Arlo Pro 3's security requirements. It also benefits from the clean magnetic charging system that we got to know in April that promises a battery life of up to six months between charges.

A better choice for Arlo upgrades

Visually, the cameras and the SmartHub of the Arlo Pro 3 look identical to those we saw when we tested the Arlo 4K Ultra. This is not a bad thing, as Arlo's much-copied design is one of the more compact and attractive systems. The curvy all-plastic case is sturdy enough to withstand the elements, while installation is simplified with a strong magnetic mounting system (a screw option is also available). A partially flattened base also allows the camera to be placed indoors on a shelf or desktop. In short, you can install the Arlo Pro 3 anywhere.

The often copied design by Arlo is one of the more compact and attractive systems.

It also includes Arlo's latest SmartHub (VMB4540), which enables the network connection between the cameras and your router. Again, it looks identical to the slimmer device introduced with the Arlo Ultra 4K, but a closer look reveals important differences. External video storage for camera recordings is available, but this model enables it via a single USB 2.0 port instead of the microSD slot equipped with the Arlo Ultra. This is good news for surveillance video horters who benefit from storage capacities of up to 2 TB. The The lower resolution video from Arlo Pro 3 also allows the system to work with reduced bandwidth requirements. This SmartHub works with 802.11 b / g / n Wi-Fi and not with the faster "AC" standard supported by the Arlo Ultra 4K.

Terry Walsh / Digital Trends

Perhaps the best news is that owners of some older Arlo systems You can add Arlo Pro 3 cameras to your existing network and take advantage of enhanced 2K video streams without having to replace the SmartHubs. This makes the Arlo Pro 3 a better upgrade option than the first-class Arlo kit. Arlo Pro 3 owners can even add Ultra 4K cameras to their systems at a later date without losing functionality.

Setup is a breeze

As with any Arlo system we tested, commissioning Arlo Pro 3 is very easy. Arlo recently launched a new version of its smartphone app that guides you through the installation. While cheaper smart camera systems can switch between direct Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections during setup, Arlo's wired SmartHub does the installation smoothly.

Hardware installation is just as easy. The scope of delivery includes options for screw and magnetic fastening. Arlo's newer concave magnetic mount is fabulous and combines strength and versatility. Cameras snap into place intelligently on the bracket on the back and can be precisely angled despite the fixed connection. For more ambitious installation, the supplied adjustable safety bracket can be screwed into walls, fences, ceilings, trees, etc. It supports 360 degree rotation and 90 degree tilt.

A step in video quality

In use, the Arlo Pro 3's 2K image quality is a noticeable improvement over the previous generation camera (and a huge leap over the 720p that is supported by the original Arlo system). While it's not quite as clear as Arlo Ultra 4K or wired Nest Cam IQ models, it's still very good indeed. With the improved resolution, you can take advantage of the camera's 12x digital zoom without pictures instantly falling into a blurry chaos. However, if you slide beyond the 3x zoom, the quality will be noticeably affected. Arlo Pro 3 is equipped with an intelligent automatic zoom and tracking function, which is practical for security monitoring. As we found with the Arlo Ultra 4K, the resolution of the camera is unfortunately reduced to 1080p when the function is activated.

Night vision offers greater sharpness and clarity than many competitors.

We found that the image quality is balanced during the day, with precise colors and good contrast. Arlo's Auto HDR feature makes it one of the few smart cameras we've tested indoors that avoid overexposure near bright windows. This means that you take pictures of people looking through your windows to see if you are at home. The 160-degree field of view is wide enough to cover all but the most spacious rooms or huge gardens, and the distortion of the fisheye is negligible.

At night, the Arlo Pro 3 color night vision feature requires the camera's built-in headlight to be illuminated. The resulting images are certainly more natural than the creepy standard black and white images produced by competitors. While the range is good, color night vision suffers from the blurring and noise that typically occur in high ISO photography. When the headlight is off, the camera returns to a standard night vision setting. The lighting range is good here too, and while monochrome images are a bit noisy, the night vision of Arlo Pro 3 offers greater clarity and clarity than many of its competitors.

Piercing alarm, integrated headlight

While the Arlo Pro 3 doesn't necessarily compete with those Simple or nest safe As a full smart home security system, it has a number of overlapping features that are worth considering until we wait for the next one to arrive Arlo security system.

The Arlo Pro 2 SmartHub piercing alarm was transmitted to the cameras themselves. The option can be triggered when motion is detected. The resulting bat is certainly enough to scare an intruder and, together with the camera's bright, integrated LED spotlight, forms an effective first line of protection for your home.

The Arlo app supports a number of configurable modes for activating the system. In addition to manually switching, you can enable monitoring using a timed schedule or geolocation setting. Each mode can be customized with simple IFTTT rules for motion detection, video recording, and built-in alarm, or you can quickly create a custom mode that suits your preferences. Everything is very simple.

Easy to use, but it's super smart under the hood.

Elsewhere, we found the updated Arlo app easy to understand. There are few ways to optimize camera settings. However, they do include useful options such as brightness, low-light settings, and video quality controls. Navigating, reviewing, and sharing video clips from the library is easy. A standard daily timeline view is supported by filters that allow users to zoom in on specific cameras or review clips based on the type of alert triggered or object detected. Our only criticism of the app is that connecting to a camera's livestream can take a while, even on the local network. In some cases, we watched live video within 5 seconds. In other cases, there is a delay of up to 30 seconds.

Terry Walsh / Digital Trends

Since both cameras broadcast 2K video live at the same time, we noticed some temporary performance problems during stress tests. About every 20 seconds, both streams were replaced by a black screen for one second before the livestream was restored. When local 2K streaming is disabled, performance has improved, although we still see flickering from time to time. Since both cameras report a good signal, we can only assume that it is a problem with the network bandwidth or a processing bottleneck. Maybe it would have been better to maintain Arlo Ultra's 802.11ac connectivity?

Intelligent functions behind Paywall

While Nest often praises Smart Cam A.I. accepted, the Arlo Pro 3 is equipped with an admirable set of enhancements that offer real convenience and utility. Unfortunately, most are locked up behind you Arlo Smart Subscription service for $ 3 per month. A 3-month free trial version is available during setup so that you can try out the functions and check whether the upgrade makes sense.

This includes extended object recognition, which the camera can use to differentiate between people, vehicles, animals and packages (the latter is currently in the beta phase). Smoke and carbon dioxide alarm detection sends you a smartphone notification when a camera detects an audible alarm. US subscribers also benefit from an e911 feature that allows you to call emergency services with a single touch of a button on your smartphone.

We loved Arlo's extensive notification feature, which adds a thumbnail to the smart notifications sent to your phone. When a person is recognized, an image captured by your camera is displayed. Many smart cams do the same thing, but Arlo also darkens the image and clearly highlights the person in the frame. With a quick glance you can check whether the friend or foe of the camera has been recognized. Arlo is easy to use, but super smart under the hood. With everyday features like custom activity zones and a 30 day cloud for video recording, Arlo Smart functions well. Only you can decide whether they are worth the extra effort.

Our opinion

While the Arlo Ultra 4K made headlines with its striking UHD video resolution, we think the Arlo Pro 3 is a more worthy and economical successor to our favorite smartcam of the past two years, the Arlo Pro 2. It is certainly not cheap, but the improved one Image quality, the integrated security functions and the simple app control of the Arlo Pro 3 make it an excellent choice for home surveillance. If you enjoy investing in a monthly subscription, you can take advantage of an expanded suite of useful A.I. Features that make the Arlo Pro 3 one of the smartest systems around. In the meantime, owners of Arlo systems of the first and second generation have a reasonable way to update their cameras and / or SmartHubs. We were waiting for a competitive Arlo Pro 2 smart cam to hit the bar – maybe it was inevitable that the Arlo Pro 3 would do the job.

Is there a better alternative?

Few intelligent cameras offer Arlo's convincing mix of simplicity, quality and versatility. With a limited budget, however, there are numerous cheaper systems available. The Swann Smart Security Camera ($ 129) is a solid budget device with similar wireless connectivity and weatherproof protection to Arlo and 1080p HD imaging. At the premium end of the market, the Arlo 4K Ultra ($ 599 for a 2-camera bundle) definitely beats the Arlo Pro 3 in terms of video quality, but upgrades should be aware that they can be used in new cameras and a replacement SmartHub investments have to use UHD video. The Cam Cam Outdoor ($ 399) and Nest Cam IQ Indoor ($ 299) cameras are great performers that lack the versatility and value of the Arlo Pro 3.

How long it will take?

Arlo Pro 3 was developed to withstand the hard temperament of mother nature with operating temperatures between -20 degrees Celsius and 45 degrees Celsius. So expect the hardware to be robust. In terms of software, Arlo continues to publish improvements and optimizations for all Arlo systems. We therefore expect the owners to live a long and happy life with the Arlo Pro 3.

Should you buy it

Yes. It's an investment, but the Arlo Pro 3 is a great choice for those considering their first smart home camera system.

Editor's recommendations

[futuristicdenial]

For typing

I’m mainly stuck between ENTP and INFJ, though I’ve not shut the door on other types; why will soon become clear. For general context, I’m 24 years of age, female, currently in between research jobs (mathematics), living alone. I have been diagnosed with depression (high-functioning).

Ne-Si:

When I am functioning properly, the world seems filled with potential, and I experience that potential as inherent to it - there is a touch of mind projection there, but also just the sense that openness is integral to reality. Whether or not it is true at the base level, I feel fulfilled when dealing with an open-ended mental world (taking the world as branching, as a series of if this then that sequences where each “if” is indeed possible rather than simply a heuristic). Being able to adapt to a changing reality (and having a changing reality) is very important to me, and I derive a lot of my identity from adaptive and generative capacity. My sense of optimism is far more linked to flexibility than anything else - and I’m terrified of becoming comfortable with a single view of the world. My concept of relationships rests very much on joint creation, on the feeling of mutual contribution to an expanding vision - and just the sharing of ideas in general, the joy of pure thought, and at times, of troubleshooting. Much of the feedback I receive is feedback on being unpredictable, ever-changing, disconnected from material reality, generative but ineffectual. For context/situating me in my life, I decided to study mathematics with a focus on logic and category theory; as such, I set out to get a bachelor’s degree. I found it stifling, slow, computational, and was made far too miserable by its structure - so I dropped out, studied the relevant material on my own, and found a way to get around the red tape a year later, going straight for a master’s. Socially I tend to find alternate paths for people, I my way of contributing to their well-being is frequently linked to allowing them a wider view of what may yet be, and helping them detect the assumptions that limited their sight. I can be at a loss when there’s no sense of motion in someone’s life, I’m not sure what they need when there’s no trap, no problem, and no developmental challenges.

I’m terrified of repetition, of a crystalized self-image, of material comfort as a main motivation. When I’m truly not myself, I become a hypochondriac, I feel constantly physically threatened, I dwell on past ideas or events, I create a doomsday view of the future, I become embroiled in feelings of inevitability and become unable to think. I mentally hoard, I zoom in one one problem, feeling it is the problem to end all problems (and usually one that is horrible to think about) I feel I can do nothing else until I’ve solved it, and my view feel so narrow and simplistic it causes me great pain. I try to move beyond the past before truly integrating the lessons I derive from it. As part of this pattern, I frequently feel my expertise is feigned, that I’ve not mastered anything, truly, that I have nothing to show for myself an endless cascade of unfinished projects. Having always fled the standard path, I’ve often felt as though I had no credibility.

Ni-Se:

I need to feel a connection to meaning, to symbology, to story, grand narrative at all times - the material is never as real to me as perception itself, and that which shapes perception. (Whether or not this is ultimately physical is beside the point, I’m looking at experience here.) The feeling that the world is structurally ugly, lifeless, without possibility or vision has lead me to feeling suicidal in the past; what helped was starting with the experience of meaning in perception, and then applying a careful conceptual cleanup, rather than attempting purity from the start. I need a charted course - even if this course changes over time - a notion of the significance of my existence, and a notion of the world itself. The possibility I crave is the possibility that allows meaning, so while I absolutely need open-endedness, a progressive unfolding, I also need a coherence of vision. Naive analysis, of the form that starts with an attempt at formalization, and then unvaryingly follows that formalism to the grave is something that absolutely kill meaning for me - perhaps I’m sensitive to this as a mathematician, but it is a natural tendency regardless. We start with the truth of perception - a formalism that cannot be absorbed into experience is a failed one; reason is human reason, dreams of enlightenment that fail to take this into account are doomed, and they’re a far worse version of mind-projection than the one I cited earlier. Presupposing meaning is very dangerous. Visualization is an integral part of my internal life - I formulate my thoughts by shifting back and forth between between verbalized propositions, and film or photo-like impressions; I cannot say one form dominates over the other. I very much start out with a blurry image, feeling it become progressively clearer - I let the fog dissipate as I integrate things into a coherent whole, and then prune. I get feedback on being pretentious, highfalutin, bizarre, uptight, cold, obsessive... Socially I see relationships as ideally being about formulating joint meaning, and a lot of what I contribute to them is a sense of airy purpose, the sense that every piece of strife and trivial pain is contributing to something larger.

When I’m truly not myself I see no way foreword, the future seems lost, people seem stupid, I feel hopeless, and all of the mental suddenly feels cold and unsafe. The sensation is that the fruitless objective is the only truth, or at least the truth that will win out of sheer efficacy, and that I have no tools to fight due to not wanting to fight with tools. I feel unable to think, unable to see, and have at times sought comfort in substance abuse - this was perhaps peak out of character behavior: impulsive, “tomorrow we die” behavior. It is feeling a bleak lack of purpose and lack of potential combined with a lack of personal significance or ability that leave me distraught. I can also feel a great sense of loneliness - not just socially, a sense of immense distance from the world, as though I cannot connect to its structure.

Fe-Ti:

My ability to harmonize is frequently the last to go; I’ve often been told that I have a kind of distanced sympathy, that I understand what someone is experiencing well enough to provide them with true comfort, while not becoming directly involved in what they’re experiencing. Reading a social environment is very easy for me, though not always interesting - and having assumed the role of the mediator and “sage” from a very young age, I’ve come to find it very burdensome. I’m quick to spot what people need, what they crave, but have a very hard time using this knowledge to craft relationships that satisfy me - in the past I frequently ended up a tool, though I have become far more self-sufficient and assertive with time. A lot of what I contribute socially is also the ability to help people see the experience of others, which I often find self-evident. Fe behaviour feels somewhat tool-like to me, however... I find I frequently need the “find emotional comfort in the world” advice, though I often feel it is unsafe/try to find justifications for it that lie outside experience. I could see Ni-Ti looping tendencies: I justify my pessimism with reason that isn’t the best I’m capable of, and my pessimism is hyper-structured; I need to rationalize any comfort before I let myself have it (and usually don’t actually allow myself to have it) and frequently apply naive conceptions of “truth” to it; I retreat from the world to defend my self-imagine as a “brilliant and unique analytical thinker”, lest the external world hit me with a hammer; I disappear from social interactions and dive further and further into a self-defeating pit. I can feel a despair that I believe to be wholly unaided by material or emotional comforts, and refuse all help that isn’t a coherent model of what is.

Ti-Fe:

What it feels to me like a far stronger concern than all others - if human values have trade-offs, I feel reality takes the cake. I cannot cede ground to grace, or beauty, or efficiency or anything else until I have given reality its due. While I may feel more fulfilled by processes I would identify with intuition, what my mind does before anything else is a formal breakdown of cause, level of correlation, level of certainty, a check on personal biases and motivation, a search for alternate explanations, etc. There is a kind of automatic analytical thought that overtakes synthesis very quickly if I’m not paying attention; it’s what my mind does when I’m not looking, even when it is inconvenient and I wish to turn it off. I have always taken great pleasure in epistemology and logic, and my interests have often involved finding the purest, most general form of reason. It feels to me like the laws of the world go without saying, they may not be pleasant, they may not be obvious, but they are, and when we rebel against them we do not realize we are nature rebelling against itself. Even when these laws drown me, I still think in terms of them - I’m more likely to condemn the subject than that which gives rise to it. Though I write about this with some degree of sadness, I used to take great joy in mere reason, but I was presupposing the human mind, I feel, and working in fields which have required me to think about optimization apart from all human enterprises has opened my eyes somewhat - value that presuppose the valuing are a tad dangerous. “System” is my default idea of what something is, analysis is my default approach. (Writing the paragraph on Ni was quite challenging because I had to turn off my nonsense detection for moment in order to document my experience without Ti overlay.) As a functional approach to the world, Ti is my go to, and used to be so to an even greater extent (it took me a long time to try other modes) as the basis for reflection and meaning, it has torn me apart, so I truly don’t know where it is.

My ego defense is very much “you are original, generative, independent, brilliant and apt”. I see myself as a jack of all trades, and I frequently deal in personal potential without actual action. I have often used social manipulation to preserve a certain self-image since I could easily manipulate feedback - and even technically, I’ve often performed intelligence in mathematics to get that feedback because, e.g writing a paper on a subfield of topology I wasn’t remotely interested in because someone was struggling with it, and claiming this was inherent to the subject.

General and examples: Inaction has often been my plight, I find meaning in planning action, in undertaking a subject, in representing personal power, and then never actually move forward. My social relationships have often been unbalanced, with me playing the role of the therapist (and validating my abilities this way) and being very unfulfilled (failing to notice this initially). I get feedback as being overly mental, but not overly cold, people feel understood by me (though they often hear what matters to me and say it sounds “very cold” or boring, and ask me to talk about my life instead, which leaves me profoundly alone). In my teens I learned contemporary dance, and this mode, this synesthesia, really gave me a sense of ease that I otherwise lacked in life.

Early in life (ages 9-14ish) I was very much the therapist to adults around me, mainly being useful by problem solving for them (getting a divorce? Here are housing arrangements and suggestions for how you might piece yourself back together. I’m also here to resignify your life. Here’s a breakdown of how I think this happened.). Simultaneously, around 12 or so, I took a stance against my family's “irrational” beliefs and became a staunch atheist, devoting myself to hard science with little philosophical sophistication. At this time I also acquired a couple of teenage friendships with that followed similar patterns, and I started having problems with substance abuse stemming from feelings of emptiness. From 14-17 I became very interested in epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, literature, filmmaking… many, many things, and I also began to gain a little more intellectual maturity. Around this time I also decided to pursue a career in mathematics (physics was also an option, though many people expected me to pursue philosophy, and a far few would have guessed psychology). From this age onwards, my focus has been on the preservation of human meaning, and the forecasting of the future. I’ve had a variety of jobs, helped a couple of start-ups get started, and generally had an unstable life (though I always needed a coherent framework for it, I always needed a sense of direction, it’s just that it evolved).

Edit: In case it isn’t clear, interest hopping, the need for new ideas and general cognitive stimulation (transformed into fright of the future/a single ugly truth in my worst periods), and a need to imagine and fantasize about the fantastical are all very present - but while I can get quite disconnected from practical matters, stark realism isn’t really a quality I lack (or appear to lack, I’m told).

[llyshamarie-blog1]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it’s miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn’t always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it’s miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it’s far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market.

[huggingthehorse-blog2]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it’s miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn’t always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it’s miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it’s far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market.

[mylenegf-blog1]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it’s miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn’t always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it’s miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it’s far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market. Salesforce Training in pune

[healthiereveryday-blog2]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it’s miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn’t always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it’s miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it’s far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market. Register Now - salesforce training in pune

[confessing-fanvergence-blog]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it’s miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn’t always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it’s miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it’s far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market. IEVISION Provides salesforce training in pune with the right knowledge of Salesforce for clearing Salesforce certification. You will get real time hands-on experience

[infinity-on-dru-blog1]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it's miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn’t always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it’s miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it’s far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market. Salesforce training in pune People go from having not even heard of Salesforce to become an expert in the field and all this because of the proper training and guidance. You must ensure to get the right kind of training for Salesforce to excel in the field because this is going to matter a lot when you are seeking a job. Ievision provides various training programs for those who are passionate about learning. Based in Pune, Ievision is one of the most trusted training institutes that is highly recommended. With proper training and guidance, this training institute also provides you with placement assistant which is really important because you will see most training centers don't have that facility. So don't think twice and kick start your career with Ievision by getting trained in Salesforce.

[darrenstummy-blog]

What is Salesforce and five Reasons why it's miles the Best CRM

Growing a enterprise is not easy. It calls for boosting income but it isn't always simply selling the service or product to present and potential customers. A enterprise is a hit handiest if it has a systematic and green manner of gathering leads in order that they may be converted to income and in the end unswerving customers. After so much studies and evaluation at the numerous consumer courting control software program’s, Salesforce is usually recommended as the exceptional CRM software program for organizations as it gives the whole thing needed to make it quicker and simpler to shut sales for a business. Here are a few convincing motives as to why it's miles the high-quality CRM software program within the market.

On-Premise vs Cloud based CRM

CRM software program answers had been presented in an ‘on-premise’ delivery version 15 years ago. Companies established the software on their servers and maintained it in-house. However, with the on-premise CRM, IT corporations needed to take at the technical responsibilities which encompass gadget design, infrastructure and server management.

This paved manner for a novel kind of CRM - the Cloud based totally CRM. In any cloud based CRM, applications are hosted by way of the seller and organizations can benefit get right of entry to to statistics via the net without having to worry approximately any technical components of managing it.

Cloud CRM has end up popular over the years upsetting the idea of the on-premise CRM model due to the fact there has been no software licensing fee involved, the company did no longer want devoted IT staff or infrastructure. This has in turn decreased the value of monthly offerings and eased the installation procedure.

What is Salesforce CRM?

Organizations had been in want of a cloud CRM to deal with all types of purchaser worries various from marketing and income to customer service - to streamline the organisation and assist in saving precious assets and time. Salesforce  become based in 1999 by former Oracle govt Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez - with a vision to reinvent the Cloud CRM model and now, Salesforce defines the brand new technology of cloud computing.

What does Salesforce do?

Salesforce is cloud based totally CRM software program, developed to make companies feature effectively and profitably via lowering the value of handling hardware infrastructure. Salesforce gives a wide range of capabilities in all the functional regions of a enterprise:

Salesforce in Marketing Team

Salesforce professional version allows the advertising and marketing crew of a agency create and music diverse advertising and marketing campaigns to degree the achievement fee and routinely provide results in the sales crew of the employer.

Salesforce in Customer Support Team

​Salesforce additionally keeps a tune of numerous purchaser problems and tracks them for resolution primarily based on diverse escalation policies inclusive of the significance of the consumer and elapsed time. This improves consumer satisfaction tiers as the problems do no longer fall via loopholes and are immediately escalated to the subsequent stage.

Salesforce in Management

​With visual dashboards and great reporting functions, Salesforce presents the management of a company with visibility on what is taking place in exceptional groups.

Salesforce in Training

Salesforce has very robust education and help features which might be above industry requirements. Salesforce customers can without difficulty discover answers to their questions from the giant on line help manual and the video stroll facility.

Salesforce in Application Integration

​Salesforce can be incorporated with different systems to extend its functionality via the Salesforce business app keep - the AppExchange.

Salesforce CRM turned into provided because the World’s Most Innovative Company through Forbes Innovators for 4 continuous years (2011-2014). Salesforce also featured in FORTUNE’s one hundred Best Companies to work for in 2012-2014.

With over 2 million clients (collected in a quick whilst) which consist of famous facts giants particularly Fujitsu, Facebook, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, Sony, and Vodafone - Salesforce CRM is honestly the undisputed market chief inside the CRM Software marketplace . Integrator Bluewolf interviewed close to 450 customer groups and concluded that 84% of the corporations trust in consumer engagement because the primary key element for destiny boom of the enterprise. Buyers understand Salesforce as the platform vital for rendering qualitative client engagement enjoy.

Tien Tzuo, the existing CEO of Zuora and ex-CMO of Salesforce stated that “CRM Software is an access factor. What we (Salesforce) are planning to be is the business internet. That way that we want to be the platform for all commercial enterprise apps. When a enterprise begins its day, they open up their apps on us and all day, all their apps are going for walks on our foundation.”

CURRENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINED GROWTH

According to Gartner, the general value of the Global CRM Software Market was 20.4 billion USD with the aid of the end of 2013 - that is expected to growth via thirteen.7 % each 12 months, making the global CRM software market a billion dollar space. Salesforce is proper on the pinnacle contributing to sixteen% of the overall CRM Software market proportion, making Salesforce and CRM software inseparable.

Yvonne Genovese, Vice President at Gartner’s Marketing Leaders Research stated “Marketing will be the most important developing Salesforce CRM class thru 2017.” The International Data Corporation (or IDC) expects the overall marketplace for advertising automation to grow from $three.2 billion in 2010 to $4.Eight billion in 2015.”

According to the Gartner research reviews, ninety four% of the Salesforce CRM revenue generated from the ‘Support and Subscription’ costs at the same time as handiest 6% of the revenue comes from ‘Professional Services’. Salesforce is focusing on “Supports and Subscriptions” to grow its sales exponentially.

The agency’s CEO Marc Benioff said that “Salesforce.Com has recorded constant foreign money and deferred sales boom of 30% or more 12 months-over year. The enterprise expects revenue to rise to between $6.Forty five billion and $6.50 billion in 2016.

VISION AND EXECUTION

With a entire long time vision and its excessive capability to execute, Salesforce CRM Software claims the very best function within the Customer Relationship Management software marketplace. The potential to execute this vision on floor has helped Salesforce attain the pinnacle.

In 2014, Gartner, once again titled  Salesforce because the leading CRM software. Salesforce has maintained this function for 4 years in a row.Salesforce has emerged as the leader within the Gartner’s Leader Magic quadrant for 2014 (the picture under illustrates the leading function of Salesforce when in comparison to other CRM software players).

STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS

Salesforce has a clever acquisition policy to growth more suitable talents. As part of their lengthy-term vision, they have been a hit in numerous strategic acquisitions from the yr 2006. Strategic Acquisitions have helped the Salesforce CRM Software build enormously broadened advertising eco machine called the Marketing Cloud.

In June 2013, ExactTarget changed into received for $2.5 billion which helped enhance the Marketing Cloud via e mail marketing campaign management and advertising automation. ExactTarget acquisition has additionally ended in Salesforce proudly owning Pardot, an utility for advertising automation that often works in the place of online advertising and marketing campaigns. Pardot facilitates raise sales by means of creating and deploying advertising campaigns. Pardot has a crucial significance in elevated sales and efficiency of Salesforce CRM Software.

The maximum current strategic acquisition has been that of RelateIQ for $390 million which helps put off manual records access by way of automatic tracking of relationships in the CRM space. This will sincerely be a vital price addition providing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

HIGHLY DIVERSIFIED OFFERINGS

Salesforce is the innovator of the SaaS technique in the employer space. Its talent in on-call for software program enables reduce the costfor customers because it offers a common networking, hardware and software program platform. Customers can improve sales and beautify verbal exchange thru various SaaS offerings of Salesforce specifically Salesforce Chatter, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud packages.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010 to provide its clients with PaaS (Platform as a Service) to provide assist for numerous programming languages. Users can customize their programs with developer equipment like TheAppExchange and Database.Com. With various offerings and wide product portfolio, Salesforce is inventing the destiny whilst other aggressive CRM software packages just like the Siebel are just trying to get into it.

Dawn of Salesforce1

Gartner has said that by means of 2015, an amazing 60% of Internet users can have a preference for mobile customer service packages, with various gadgets and programs being to be had on a unmarried platform.

To stay tuned with the increasing call for and developing trend, Salesforce launched Salesforce1 in October 2013- an innovative CRM platform for software vendors, builders, and customers for connecting applications and 1/3-birthday party offerings including Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.Instant and customized Customer Service, On-Screen guided assist and live video aid are simply a number of the high-quality features of Salesforce1 which make a contribution to its dominance within the CRM software space.

Salesforce1 has seen significant boom of active cell application customers that is whopping ninety six% with forty six% increase in the active customers for custom designed cellular applications. Thus, Salesforce1 is a hit in leveraging the boom within the Customer Relationship Management Software market by way of assembly the increasing demand cell gadgets’ carrier companies.

What the destiny holds for Salesforce CRM Software?

With one of a kind Salesforce reviews at the web, it's far palpable that although the fee for Salesforce CRM Software service is greater, has the great person-friendly interface while as compared to other CRM softwares along with Siebel, SugarCRM. According to IDC, the general Marketing Automation marketplace is poised to touch $five.5 billion in 2016 from $3.7 billion in 2011which offers fantastic boom projections for Salesforce CRM inside the marketing category.

Salesforce is on the edge to offer an array of diversified cloud packages and offerings to meet the unquenchable demand for cloud computing. Salesforce Customer Relationship Management software program is all set to develop exponentially within the CRM software market. People go from having not even heard of Salesforce to become an expert in the field and all this because of the proper training and guidance. You must ensure to get the right kind of training for Salesforce to excel in the field because this is going to matter a lot when you are seeking a job. Ievision provides Salesforce training in pune . Ievision is one of the most trusted training institutes that is highly recommended. With proper training and guidance, this training institute also provides you with placement assistant which is really important because you will see most training centers don’t have that facility. So don’t think twice and kick start your career with Ievision by getting trained in Salesforce.https://ievision.org/products/course/salesforce-adm-pune

[jaxonjack2]

CodeIgniter for Heavy Applications, Yes or No

Codeigniter has been a driving force behind numerous web-based applications for many years. As the times change and the ever-changing requirements, the framework has continued to evolve. With the current, better version of CodeIgniter. CodeIgniter can be used to develop large applications. It takes into consideration factors like security and bug handling in a well-established manner. Without a doubt, hire CodeIgniter developer is among the most effective options on the market for creating fully-featured web applications.

You can rely on CodeIgniter when you're developing an application with massive numbers of data generated every second. Many big-scale applications are assisted by CodeIgniter and have been performing well for a long time, including Freed camp or buffer.

CodeIgniter is a PHP-built framework with the MVC structure. Suppose you inquire with a web-based development firm, Codeigniter, on why they're so committed to this framework. In that case, they'll boast about things such as it allows more work to be accomplished with fewer lines of code, the detection of bugs is much easier and modifying is easy, and so on.

The most significant issues of creating massively responsive web applications, like performance, scalability, user interfaces, security, and user experience, are easily solved by Codeigniter. Massive applications must be built using test-driven development because a lot of hitting and trial occurs throughout the process. They require constant integration and perseverance from the developers.

Let's take examine the main advantages of CodeIgniter, which make it among the top alternatives for the development of Large Applications:

1 - MVC System

CodeIgniter works on the Model-View-Controller approach, which means that the application's logic is separate from its presentation. In essence, this lets the web pages include much less code than average, and above, the script and presentation are separate. The Model is the name given to the structures of data. The View is the information that is shown to the viewer. The Controller acts as an intermediate between the model (a data structure) and the View (the display.) That is why Codeigniter is a very flexible MVC approach. It means that if you do not wish to keep the Model and View separated, you may decide to leave this out.

2 - Rapid Development

It is among the most sophisticated frameworks available in PHP that has a tiny footprint. It is open source and the most popular choice for creating large-sized fully-featured, dynamic websites. The simple tools and an extremely efficient interface help to achieve rapid and constant development in development. Instead of putting all the attention on complicated coding, developers should concentrate on the artistic aspects of the software. Naturally, the moment, you can hire CodeIgniter developer to get the application built in a brief amount of time. It is a natural influence on the ROI of your investment, as you can achieve the desired outcomes with less time and effort.

3 - Customization Options

Customizing PHP web development with the CodeIgniter is adaptable and straightforward. The framework's robust design allows for plenty of space for custom controllers as well as customized drivers. The framework allows developers to go into great depth and customize on all levels. This framework's sleek and easy toolset is simple to comprehend, use, and alter as per the requirements.

4 - Error Handling

Frameworks follow a predefined path. Therefore, the chances of making mistakes when writing code, regardless of the number of people working on it, are minimal. It is because CodeIgniter is a program that the code is automatically written into the correct areas. Thus, the possibilities of duplicate codes are nearly impossible. The creation of error-free programs becomes more straightforward with the error_reporting function and the error logging class to save errors in text files.

[npmjs]

The new npm CLI: a year in review; or, what you may have missed!

First published just under a year ago, npm@5 has probably seen the fastest rate in major changes of any prior npm version. Even if you’ve been following us closely, you probably still haven’t been able to keep up with everything that’s been going on with npm@5.

With npm@6.0.0 getting tagged as latest this week, we thought it would be a good idea to summarize all the changes that have happened since npm@5.0.0 was first tagged — and what you can expect to get in one upgrade when you first install npm@6.0.0!

Speeeeeeeed

This one’s first because it’s the most noticeable change for anyone doing the initial switch. npm is now between 4x and 17x faster than npm@4, especially in CI settings. This means developers can iterate on their changes faster, share their changes faster, and spend less time waiting between pushing a new build and continuing deployment. These sorts of speed differences are not just about making existing things fast, either—they’re about opening doors to entire new opportunities and allowing our users to scale projects beyond what they could do before.

We’ll continue to improve performance��both the CLI and registry teams are dedicated to getting you all that code as fast as your hardware allows it.

package-lock.json and automatic conflict resolution

Along with the speed change, you might have noticed a new file in your git repositories. package-lock.json is a so-called “lock file” that saves information about your node_modules/ tree since you last edited your dependencies. Even though it’s a generated file, it’s meant to be committed into git and has a number of benefits, including increased reproducibility across teams, reduced network overhead when installing, and making it easier to debug issues with dependencies.

Because this was such a significant change to the way npm works, initial iterations of package-lock.json were a bit of a bumpy ride, with unexpected changes and platform differences. As of npm@6, your lock file will be stable not just between you and your coworkers on similar platforms, but across operating systems! You can even use npm install --package-lock-only to generate one of these without installing into node_modules/.

Some folks faced issues when using package-lock.json that led to inscrutable git conflicts. As of npm@5.7 (and, by extension, npm@6), npm will now automatically resolve package-lock conflicts when you run npm install during a conflicted state. To make this experience even smoother, we’ve released npm-merge-driver, which lets you do all the rebasing and merging and other git backflips. You can get started with the merge driver by doing $ npx npm-merge-driver install -g one time. After that, all your future merge and rebase conflicts in any git repo will be resolved in the background.

Those of you who used package-lock.json throughout the npm@5 release line will see a big git diff next time you do an npm install with npm@6: the requires field is changing its format slightly, and we’re adding a new from field to locked git dependences (if you use those) but you should not see this happen again if you and your team are all on npm@6 or later.

npx

What’s that npx thing we mentioned? Why, it’s the npm package runner! npm@5.3 introduced a new workflow tool included with npm itself. npx solves a lot of specific problems, but its overall purpose is making the experience of working with npm-based CLI tools easy, smooth, and seamless!

npx can actually do a lot of different things, but the biggest benefits are:

You can run project-local binaries with it. That means you don’t need to install things like grunt-cli, gulp, bower, and tsc globally—you can install them as devDependencies and use npx to run the local versions without hassle (for example, $ npm i -D standard && npx standard).

You can do one-off, temporary installs of command line utilities that you run rarely, such as generators: $ npx create-react-app.

You can easily try different versions of these tools with a single install if you need to compare them: $ npx standard@8 && npx standard@10.

You can even install the shell auto-fallback to not even have to write $ npx ... in many cases.

npx has already made a huge difference in the daily workflow of many of our users. Have you tried it yet?

npm ci

Thanks to the new package-lock.json feature, we were able to add a cool new command in npm@5.7.0: npm ci! This added a second installer to the npm CLI that takes advantage of projects with package-lock.json files in order to rapidly extract to node_modules/. It skips a lot of the interactivity and human-oriented checks that npm install does, and even makes it so that any inconsistencies trigger errors, rather than having the npm install command fix them for you. npm ci, as the name implies, is meant primarily for use in Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment situations where you want fast installs that give you early warnings about potential errors. npm ci is about 2–3x faster than a regular npm install.

Finally, as with npm it, there’s now an npm cit for doing an npm ci install + npm test in a single command.

Two-factor authentication and token management

Last October, npm introduced two-factor authentication for a number of account-related actions, including publishing and dist-tag management. Roughly 9 billion weekly downloads—about 43% of downloads—now involve packages that were published by 2fa-protected accounts. That’s amazing news for the overall security of the ecosystem.

As part of that release, we also included the ability to create “read-only” tokens, filter tokens by CIDR, and manually manage your active tokens through the CLI and the website.

Brand new cache and offline installs

npm@5 introduced a completely new system cache for package downloads, replacing the older, buggier, and slower implementation. It was built on top of a standalone library, cacache, and was designed to work closely with the new package-lock.json format by enabling content-addressable storage of package data. This allows it to do much faster lookups of tarball data. It also allows npm to verify your package data on every single install, so you can always trust that what comes out of the registry or the cache is exactly the data you expect it to be.

This process also upgraded our shasum infrastructure to support Subresource Integrity, with new tarballs being published with sha512, instead of the now-insecure sha1 algorithm. This method also makes it much easier to upgrade our infrastructure once faster and better cryptographic hashing algorithms become available in Node.js.

Finally, the new cache architecture enabled a much-awaited npm feature: seamless offline installation! If you don’t have network access or can’t reach the registry for some reason, npm will automatically install from your cache without the need for any extra flags or preparation. Just keep a warm cache and go ahead and do your work on a plane or while you’re disconnected from the network to preserve bandwidth. If you’re on a functional but slow connection, you can even use the new --prefer-offline flag to opt into stale data in exchange for minimal network hits.

Reproducible builds

npm ci and lock files aren’t the only exciting feature for devops folks! As part of npm@5, Isaac completely rewrote node-tar, which is a huge part of the recent performance boost. It also gave us the ability to pack tarballs with pinned file timestamps.

npm can now generate and publish tarballs built at different times on different platforms with identical shasums, enabling reproducible builds!

Keep in mind that you still need to make sure your build run-scripts generate reproducible build artifacts for this to work!

npm publish and npm pack improvements

npm now prints a summary of tarball details whenever you package up an npm project. This summary includes information about the files that you’re including, along with their file sizes (which can help make sure you’re publishing only what you intend), the name and version of the package, and the shasum and integrity for the generated tarball.

In addition, both npm publish and npm pack now support --dry-run and --json flags. With these, you can test that you’re getting what you expect before you actually publish your project. If you’re trying to get reproducible builds working, you can use --dry-run to check that your scripts are generating your published files consistently.

Because npm publish and npm pack both accept any package specifier, you can even use them to test other people’s packages to make sure, for example, that the tarball published to npm actually matches the tagged git version: $ npm pack --dry-run github:zkat/figgy-pudding && npm pack --dry-run figgy-pudding.

You can even hook into the new prepack, pack, and postpack lifecycle scripts along with the new prepare lifecycle to automate this detection as desired.

Better git support

npm has also greatly improved its interaction with git dependencies, adding two major features to git deps:

First, git-based packages with prepare scripts defined will have their devDependencies installed and the prepare script executed before the package tarball for the dependency is packaged and installed. This means that if you want to work off a fork but you want a build step for your library, you can still have that build process! You don’t need to check in built/minified .js directly into git anymore—npm will generate them for you.

Second, npm added semver-range support for git dependencies. Just like you can do $ npm install pkg@^1.2, you can now do npm install github:usr/pkg#semver:^1.2. Semver support will work off branch and tag names, so as long as you keep those up, you’ll be able to use semver with them.

These features should help smooth out the experience for users that are heavily reliant on git dependencies.

npm hooks

npm hooks have been available for a couple of years, but the only way to manage them was through a separate CLI. As of npm@6, you can manage hooks directly with npm itself.

This feature allows you to add webhooks to npm packages, scopes, or users, and have the npm registry post to an external endpoint when related events happen. Hooks can be a great way to integrate npm into your release flow or to get better analytics. Check them out!

file: dependency symlinking

Previously, directory dependencies (that is, what would install if you did $ npm install ../some-pkg), would go through a two-step process: first, they would be packaged into a tarball, as if for publishing, and then that tarball would be installed as a dependency. However, updating that dependency’s code in the future required that you do a full install of it again. That caused some friction for users wanting to work based off local packages or who were working on monorepos.

Now, those dependencies are installed as symlinks, so any changes you make to them will be immediately visible to your package without needing to do a whole new install.

Improved output and usability improvements

npm@6 also includes a number of smaller aesthetic and usability improvements we’ve been incrementally landing in npm:

npm install saves by default

npm install now savess dependency changes by default. You no longer need to remember to add --save before your dependencies get written to package.json (and package-lock.json). This applies to other commands as well, like npm update and npm uninstall.

New npm view output format

Previously, you’d get several screenfuls of colorful JSON output any time you did $ npm view. Now you get this:

You can still access the JSON version by using --json or you can access specific packument fields with $ npm view [...], but the default view is now much easier to view and understand and it includes what we think is the most essential information about the package.

Short install summary

Running npm install in npm@4 would get you a massive amount of tree output. This output made sense when projects were smaller, but it eventually became unreadable for users and took a long time to calculate and print out.

Now, this is all you get when you run npm install on a big project:

We also added the by N contributors section to increase awareness of everyone putting effort into improving the npm ecosystem. You can find out how to give back by running $ npx thanks.

npm update respects latest

The npm update command was a weird creature before: unlike npm install, it would ignore the latest tag and instead install the highest semver-matching version available for that package. Sometimes, these higher versions were intended as prerelease versions and could cause unintentional installs of unstable software.

As of npm@6, $ npm update foo and $ npm install foo will have similar semantics on this front, with the exception that update will limit its install to a version matching the currently-saved semver range for that package.

install and update skip deprecated versions.

Along those lines, if you try and install a package and it has deprecated some of its versions, npm@6 will try to avoid installing the deprecated ones and find other matching versions if possible. Deprecated versions will only be installed if there’s no other way to fulfill the requested version.

Module: example Versions: 1.0.0 1.1.0 1.1.2 1.1.3 (deprecated)

So, given this example, npm install example@^1 will now install example@1.1.2, whereas before, it would have installed example@1.1.3.

…and more to come!

There’s a lot of very exciting changes coming in 2018! For more info about what we have planned, take a look at this post. 

 We’re working hard this year to continue minimizing friction for JavaScript developers and make the experience of using npm as smooth, seamless, and secure as we can. npm is the largest package ecosystem in the world and continues to grow at an incredible pace—we’re glad to have the opportunity to make that possible and bring JavaScript and web development into the future it deserves!

Watch this space: follow @npmjs on Twitter for release updates and subscribe to our newsletter!

[cryptocoinguides]

Revealed – The Next Big Altcoins & Airdrops!!

Let’s talk about tokens today. The Altcoins because if we are getting near the end of the bear trap I predicted we currently are in those alts are going to run. Like, run forest run because after the bear trap is mania phase, or my term for it, the last hoorah. So you maniacs can you give me a hoorah? Because it’s time for Chico Crypto! Yesterday it seemed a touch of mania was already beginning! Coinbase late to the party, decided to finally do it and list Dogecoin to Coinbase Pro. And the Coinbase listing effect still had its power.

Checking out the Dogecoin price chart, some explosive moves, which have shot it up by over 51 percent since its Saturday lows. Which got ole Elon tweeting again. In response to Coinbase Pro listing it, he posted (dot dot dot) and a retweet of the meme of the doge storm standard, taking over the global financial system and him saying it’s inevitable.

So, there is a play with Doge still to this day. Just 2 weeks ago, on May 20th Elon tweeted this. How much is that Doge in the Window? With a picture of what looks to be a 1 dollar dogebill, on a laptop, in front of a neon Cyberviking sign. Aka Elon wants to see Doge to a buckeroo as it didn’t hit it when everyone thought it would with his SNL appearance So, what could be coming that would push it to that Dollar mark? Well, remember when Elon tweeted that Tesla was no longer accepting Bitcoin for payments? He also said they were looking at other cryptos that use less than 1 percent of BTCs energy per transaction.

Well, dogecoin fits that bill! It only takes .12 kilowatt-hours consumed per doge transaction, while BTC takes 707-kilowatt hours. That is less than 1 percent. And then there was this, just 3 weeks ago. Elon put out a poll for the public. Asking the Twitterverse if they want Tesla to accept Dogecoin.

Which got a nearly 80 percent YES with almost 4 million votes. In my opinion, it’s pretty obvious a Tesla announcement of Dogecoin for payment is coming and probably coming this Summer. Within the next month or two. And that hype, combined with a rebound in the markets should see Dogecoin relook towards that dollar mark.

Now, moving down the market cap rankings to the most popular and dominant DEX in the space. Uniswap!! We are closing in on the 1 monthly anniversary of the v3 launch of their exchange so it’s time to talk about LP, liquidity pool positions, and how to make it easier on yourself to add liquidity to the exchange.

Uniswap v2 made adding liquidity to trading pools simple..you just selected the pair you want, put equal value amounts of each in, and supplied and confirmed the transaction, receiving an LP token. It was automated for you. You didn’t have to change or set anything.

I’m sure some of you have seen today, what v3 is like there are things you have to set, like the fee, which isn’t too bad but also the one that confuses everybody the price ranges! A minimum and maximum price to create the range. Then going to Uniswap v3 liquidity documentation the team says If the price moves outside of the LP’s specified range, their position will be concentrated in one of the two assets and not earn trading fees until the price returns to their range.

Yeah, you have to keep a close eye on your LP positions, and the price, as if it moves out of your set ranges, you don’t earn fees. You have to be active which the team says in that documentation When making a price range decision, LPs should consider the extent to which they think prices will move over the course of their position’s lifetime and their willingness to actively manage their positions (and all the costs associated with more active management). So for those who don’t know what they are doing or don’t have the time to be so active.

How do you provide Liquidity to Uniswap easily?? Well, there is the Sommelier Finance pairing app!! Going to that it says it the easiest way to add liquidity to Uniswap v3. Heck yeah, Chico likes And it is pretty dang easy. You just search for the v3 pair you want to add liquidity to and click on it. We are doing Link and WrappedETH.

Select the pair you want, altcoin and eth or wrapped eth, and the amount of each. Once that is filled in, you select your sentiment for ETH, are you neutral.. you think Link vs ETH is gonna hodl the same. Are you bearish on ETH vs LINK, or are you bullish on ETH vs LINK? It changes the price ranges for you based on this.

You then set your gas price, and click add liquidity. Much, much, much more simple than setting the ranges yourself within the v3s liquidity interface. So I’m sure you are asking yourself a token?? For Sommelier? Not yet, they put out their product first, and plan to launch the token later.

SOMM It’s coming just no official date yet! Definitely, one to keep an eye on though. But speaking of Uniswap LP positions, and automating that leads us right into a sponsored segment of this content, supported by the team over at Peanut, and like always the full details of our agreement are down in the description Jumping right to their website found at peanut. trade, a link for that is down below in the description, we can see what their main selling point is.

They are a DeFi Price Balancer for DEX users to reduce slippage and impermanent loss & the main product is the liquidity balancer. Jumping to that’s landing page, they describe it as putting your liquidity on autopilot and maximizing LP profits.

Very nice they continue. Peanut is the first-ever automated liquidity balancer for Uniswap v3 that concentrates liquidity price range based on real-time market conditions. Basically, this means Peanut will take the complexity out of the price ranges with v3.

They will automatically adjust and move them to the most capital-efficient and profitable ones. Keeping you earning the most fees. instead of those who do it manually, falling out of profitable ranges and the stats are looking good from their initial research. Providing more fees per dollar than just Uniswap v3 alone & manual adjustments.

Besides, automatic adjustments Peanut has something in the works with Curve, they partnered together & Michael Egorov, CEO of curve said this about the peanut solution: The presence of slippage is a huge inconvenience, and can sometimes carry significant risks for DEXs. Peanut provides a great solution to this problem. By using only 10% of user funds in a centralized manner (cross-exchange arbitrage), Peanut manages to achieve significantly higher efficiency of the mechanics and returns for users.

Although ack at their website you can see it’s a waitlist to join, which makes sense, as Uniswap v3 just launched less than a month ago. I’m sure it’s close to being ready so get signed up so you don’t miss the initial launch! But, also releasing soon, to work alongside their v3 product, is another piece of their DeFi puzzle. Peanut FeeNo. Feeno is an SDK that can be integrated into blockchain apps like crypto wallets, DEXs, lending protocols to enable ETH-free transactions and swaps, provide 100% front-run protection, and even can offer a cashback to the app users. Also with Feeno, you don’t need ETH at all, no matter which ERC-20 tokens you send or swap. Yes, others projects and apps can and will use FeeNo to help their own users. One of the first use cases, for FeeNo, will be Peanut’s own products, like the v3 liquidity balancer but since it’s an SDK, others can easily plug it in and use it too.

So if any of this fits your crypto fancy, links for the peanut are below! Now I want to finish this episode off with a bit of crypto alpha leak including an airdrop you might be eligible to claim! So let’s begin with the airdrop this is from Ribbon Finance, and at their website, they say they are a sustainable alpha for everyone, earning yield on crypto assets through DeFis first structured products protocol.

And they have one product out, the yield with 3 other structured products coming soon. And then scroll down to the investors it’s an alpha list.DragonFly, Coinbase, Joe Lubin, and even Kain Warwick So how do you get the airdrop? Well, you have to go to their app found at the app, ribbon, finance, and then in the top right corner, click red RBN, connect a wallet & see if you have any! Who is eligible? A total of 4M RBN was distributed between users of existing options protocols on Ethereum: Hegic, Opyn, Charm, and Primitive.

We talked about Hegic we talked about Opyn you may be eligible! Although if you are, the tokens aren’t transferable yet! So do you want to talk about a token that is trading!? One that I have been waiting to hit the scene for a very long time? Well, Centrifuge’s governance token CFG is finally on Coingecko & its first exchange! And Centrifuge is pushing forward with some BIG news 2 weeks ago, they announced Altair, their Kusama parachain.

And scrolling down to the genesis token distribution you can see 61 percent of AIR tokens, for the parachiain are airdropped to CFG holders. 1 CFG gets you 1 AIR.and with the parachain auctions on Kusama right around the corner this snapshot airdrop is becoming more likely to happen by the day. Chico likes. Cheers Ill see you next time!.

via Revealed – The Next Big Altcoins & Airdrops!!

[joiedevivrevehicles]

Renault Megane R.S. 2021 update Info

Five-door, turbocharged, auto-only Megane RS is unashamed of the new school - but don't hold that against it.

It's becoming the norm to speak of a golden era for hot hatches. Fast, practical, huge fun and inexpensive to run; the class-leading contenders let you have it all. Yet given how long this period has lasted, it might be better to consider brilliant hot hatches as mere par for the course in 2021. There simply isn't a dud in the line-up, from Fiesta ST through Toyota GR Yaris to Mercedes-AMG A45. Buyers are spoilt for choice - and the manufacturers have upped their game accordingly.

It was into a sector only marginally less competitive than 2021's that the third iteration of Renault Sport Megane arrived. The brief was tough - to keep the old guard of R.S. fans happy while bringing new buyers into the fold - but the form book spoke for itself: Renault Sport had been the standard bearers since the turn of the century.

As it transpired, the old 280 and 300 Trophy (all models now have 300hp, and the manual option has gone) achieved as many hits as they did misses. There was a lot to like in isolation, the Renault Megane being exciting and engaging in its own way, but the fact remained that it wasn't as fun to drive as its predecessor nor as nice to use every day as a Golf GTI. Of course, it escaped no one that the former was hard to achieve while pursuing the latter.

Now, three years later, we have a facelift. And, more importantly than that, a Renault Sport facelift. Which, for whatever reason, often feel like more than the sum of their parts. A tinker of this and a tweak of that often seem to have significant influence - think Clio 197 to 200 and Megane 225 to 300. Furthermore, the Megane tested here might just be the best option in the range: the Sport chassis with that now-compulsory EDC dual-clutch gearbox. Few will mourn the demise of the obdurate manual or the stiffness of a Trophy chassis, which can be wearing on the road. If the Megane is really going to be up with the class best - the i30 N now has a DCT option as well, plus there's the Focus ST automatic - then it's most probably in this configuration.

INTERIOR

It's funny how quickly and substantially quality perceptions alter. Back in 2018 the Mk7 Golf GTI was still being lauded for the cohesion of its cabin, against which the old Megane R.S. could only offer an unresponsive touchscreen, cheap ventilation controls and awkward integration of the manual gearbox. It was far from brilliant.

How times have changed. Not only has the latest Golf seemingly dropped the ball as far as ease of use goes, but Renault’s new EasyLink system has also moved the Megane's interior on leaps and bounds. Still a portrait layout and now with a 9.3-inch display, it rights the wrongs of before: specifically, the screen responds promptly to every command and maintains the consistent smartphone connection it couldn't manage before. With more vibrant displays and user-friendly menus, in addition, EasyLink is a big step forward for the Megane.

That's not the only thing, either. Those scratchy, unsatisfying controls for the air-con have been upgraded to weightier, higher-quality knurled dials, again a noticeable improvement and vastly preferable to the weird VW sliding scale. The R.S.-branded 'Multi-Sense' drive mode button - cycling through Comfort, Normal, Sport, Race and MySense - has been enlarged and repositioned from the dash to the transmission tunnel. Again, it's another small point that improves usability - it's far easier for your left hand to reach now, and no longer means the hazards might be pressed by accident.

Though Renault offers Recaro seats (and, it says, a 20mm lower driving position as a result) as an option on the Trophy, there's precious little cause for complaint in the standard ones. They don't look as racy, sure, but are well-sited, decently supportive and plenty comfortable enough. Perhaps the driving position isn't beyond improvement - the pedals are a little offset, and more reach adjustment would benefit the taller driver - but it is extremely competitive in a way its predecessor was not.

ENGINE & GEARBOX

The Megane is unique in its segment for using just 1.8-litres to make 300hp. Most rivals deploy 2.0-litre engines, and the Focus ST offers fully another half a litre of swept capacity from its 2.3-litre Ecoboost. For the Renault, a bore of 79.7mm and a stroke of 90.1mm means 1,798cc in total, with 300hp at 6,000rpm and 399.97Nm at 2,400rpm - as per the previous model, and competitive in its class. The closest rival on paper would be Hyundai's i30 N DCT, with 280hp and 391.83Nm.

Interestingly, given the hot hatch trend, the Megane only uses six gears for its dual-clutch automatic - all other rivals have seven, and the Hyundai goes with eight. The seven-speed is used in the Alpine A110 with the same engine isn't rated for the additional torque. It makes the R.S. a tad busier on the motorway than might be expected, cruising at little less than 3,000rpm, and can't aid fuel economy either - the official combined is 33, which is the same as Honda's more powerful, manual-geared Civic Type R.

Furthermore, although the six-speed auto is broadly speaking a decent gearbox - and comes with nice shift paddles - it isn't without fault. In the sportier drive modes, it's too keen to both hold a gear and kick down, making what might just be a spirited drive feel a lot more frenetic than it needs to. It's prone to indecision, too, and can change at inopportune moments. There are fewer issues in normal conditions, so it's often preferable to take manual control with the paddles for driving a bit quicker - their size and travel make them satisfying to use and the gearbox is responsive to fingertip requests. In the Sport and Race modes, kick down and the automatic upchanges are disabled, too. It's another welcome touch for enthusiasts that aren’t replicated everywhere.

The Megane's engine remains as likeable as ever, performance belying its relatively modest stature. While there isn't the ultimate zeal of something like the Civic's 2.0-litre unit, the R.S. is more than willing to rev; peak torque at higher engine speeds makes it a tad less accessible than some rivals, the flipside being a more thrilling, boostier nature. An augmented induction gurgle isn't unpleasant, especially when complemented by a very vocal set of exhaust pipes. Many have tried (and most have failed) to get the right mixture of civility and silliness from hot hatch exhausts in recent years - none have done it better than Renault.

In terms of raw performance, the numbers are again competitive: the Megane will reach 100km/h in less than six seconds, and reach beyond 257.5km/h. There's never any desire for more, truth be told.

CHASSIS

In a world of increasing chassis configurability - optional dampers on an Octavia vRS bring 15 different settings - it's refreshing to see Renault Sport's confidence in a passive suspension set up. Buy a Sport and you get that chassis; buy a Trophy and you get the Cup chassis - 10 per cent stiffer overall with tweaks to springs, dampers, anti-roll bars and bump stops. There's no chopping and changing. You'll get 19-inch wheels as standard, too; the Sport comes with 18s, though this test car had larger rims optioned on - as most buyers will.

Now, a good passive chassis can be great - superior even, if its compromise is neatly struck. Trouble is a bad one can be a pain in the... well, everywhere really. Which was the old Trophy's issue, really, and it would be a surprise to find it any different this time around - inspirational in the right surroundings and doubtless a boon on circuit, but pretty tough the rest of the time.

For road use, it's hard to argue against the Sport chassis. If not as supple as the good old days, but neither is the Megane punishing, it blends comfort and control really well. Even on the optional, larger wheels you'll not curse it on a motorway journey, nor bemoan its lack of composure on a B-road.

In fact, the R.S. 300 Sport is, broadly speaking, a lot of fun when the road goes from major to minor. The oft-criticised 4Control rear-wheel steer remains standard fitment and, though still not the most intuitive, the system does seem to work better in conjunction with the slightly more accommodating Sport chassis. It's still sharp off centre, albeit not quite as darty and unnerving as previous Trophys. It helps no end that the rest of the car radiates poise - hydraulic bump stops really are handy on a craggy country lane - in the finest French tradition.

What a shame, then, that so much of the hard work is almost undone by the lack of a locking differential. No doubt the Megane was more exposed than usual in miserable January conditions, but to offer a 300hp, front-wheel drive car of any kind with only an open diff (the Trophy's Torsen isn't available on the Sport) seems like madness. Where rivals would dig in and redeploy torque somewhere useful, the Sport pushes wide with one tyre messily spinning up. The Perfohub front suspension, chunky 245-section Bridgestones (on the 19-inch wheel, otherwise 235) and well-sorted traction control do a good job, with far better purchase than might be expected - but ultimately they're fighting a losing battle. This means at those points where the Megane looks set to go from very good to even better, the hardware (or lack thereof) lets the side down.

For those eyeing up the Megane as a Golf GTI alternative, perhaps a traction deficit at the handling limit isn't the end of the world. On the other hand, a limited-slip differential could be on the options list for keen drivers that would make a precious little difference in everyday driving - certainly not in a way that stiffer suspension or a louder exhaust might - while unlocking the best from the chassis. There's little to complain about in the braking department, with 355mm discs up front, and 290mm behind, the former being clamped by Brembo callipers. In that typical Renault Sport fashion, the initial pedal feel is a little soft, but there's decent feel and performance once into the meat of the travel.

COSTS

The current crop of hot hatches is hard enough to separate on the road - and it's much the same on paper. The new Megane RS range begins at R633,900, which will likely lead some to throw up their hands. But consider this: the first Trophy launched in 2005 at R397,000 allowing for inflation that's R596,000 today - that’s not a big difference. Compared to the Renault Megane price, which starts at R325,900 at Group 1 Renault, it seems excessive, but consider all the ‘extras’ you’ll get.

This particular Megane R.S. 300 Sport was R716,360 with extras like the Flame Red paint, 19-inch wheel upgrade, Alcantara upholstery and heated seats. For reference, the last Golf GTI we tested was optioned toR768,793, and the Civic R738,314. Beyond a panoramic sunroof, there isn't anything more to add to the Renault. Smartphone mirroring with the big screen, a 10-inch TFT driver display, BOSE stereo, LED lights, reversing camera and a suite of active safety technology is all standard. That the latter never saw fit to intervene speaks to how well it's integrated.

The older design of dual-clutch means the Megane might be a little more expensive to run than some rivals. A less powerful Golf GTI is officially 5mpg and 25g/km better off, and a Focus ST automatic is said to be capable of 40mpg. Furthermore, as the Megane nudges over 190g/km - depending on wheel size it's 191 or 192g/km.

VERDICT

By and large, this latest Renault Sport Megane update achieves what you'd like every facelift to do: address weaknesses while leaving what was good untouched. So it's still the best looking car in the class, plenty fast enough and apparently built in a way that will dispel all your old French quality myths. In addition, a markedly improved interior makes it more appealing both in the showroom and in day-to-day use - to look at and to sit in, the Megane does feel good as well (if not better than) anything else in its class. You'd be very happy to see this parked on your drive, and that counts for a lot. A Civic Type R might not sit so well in suburbia.

Your priorities will ultimately dictate where the Megane lands in the final pecking order. Those after the best hot hatch to drive are still better served by the Honda, which is more capable overall and just as engaging in its own way. It shouldn't be forgotten, either, that the rear seats and boot are also more accommodating. 

Nevertheless, this latest R.S. 300 remains a deeply impressive and - perhaps just as importantly - exceptionally likeable car. It's a richer, more rewarding experience than anything currently built on the MQB platform, a nicer place to sit than a Focus ST and a real pleasure to drive briskly. This feels like the most successful iteration of the Megane IV R.S. formula yet, with great usability evident alongside an appreciable Renault Sport edge, and deserves wider recognition as a result. It comes highly recommended. But would be even more so with a limited-slip diff.

SPECIFICATION | RENAULT SPORT MEGANE 300 

Engine: 1,798cc 4-cyl, turbo

Transmission: 7-speed dual-clutch auto, front-wheel drive

Power (hp): 300@6,000rpm

Torque (Nm): 399.97 @ 2,400rpm

0-100km/h: 5.7 seconds

Top speed: 260km/h

Weight: 1,447kg ('kerbweight without options')

MPG: 33.6 (WLTP)

CO2: 191g/km (WLTP)

.

Article from https://www.pistonheads.com/