ar

We got married at a luxury resort in Thailand. If I could go back, there are 5 things I'd do differently.

Looking back, Ellie Furuya says her wedding reception in Thailand was too adult-centric. If she could go back, she'd make it more kid-friendly.




ar

The full list of major US companies slashing staff this year, including Goldman Sachs, Meta, and Chegg

Companies have continued to cut jobs in 2024 after a wave of layoffs last year. Meta, Goldman Sachs, Google, and Tesla are among those shedding staff.





ar

China's renaming of its regional jet is another clear sign its homegrown planemaker is coming for Boeing and Airbus

The ARJ21 is now to be known as the C909. The renaming plays into COMAC's ambition to enter the global market.




ar

Russia's lucrative oil and oil industry is an easy target for Europe after Trump's election victory

The European Commission's president said the European Union could boost US liquified natural gas purchases in a deal with Trump.




ar

Three Benefits of Promoting Digital Goods and Software Products

Are you dreaming of being your own boss someday, or would you like to bring in extra income? Starting an online business is one of the easiest ways to accomplish this. The biggest challenge of starting an online business can be developing your business plan. If you are struggling to come up with that brilliant […]




ar

Affiliate Interview: ITE.HU, Affiliate Wars Contest Winner

Szuhi Attila of ITE.HU placed third in our recent Avangate Network Affiliate Wars Contest despite being relatively new to the world of affiliate marketing. We interviewed him about his affiliate marketing techniques and overall approach to creating online content.




ar

4 Omnichannel Marketing Best Practices for eCommerce

Nowadays many shoppers don’t even remember how they learned about an eCommerce brand in the first place. If you ask them, the most popular answer is “I found it somewhere on the Internet”. Commercial information is all over the place, so nobody cares about the “channel” they use to find it anymore.




ar

Industry Buzz – February 2019

Hi, sellers! In this Industry Buzz, we’re focusing on finding those strategies that will help your digital business achieve long-term growth. To that end, we’ve put together quite a list of resources on conversion rate optimization, pricing, retention, lead nurturing and growth tips and frameworks.




ar

Why and How to Effectively Use Webinars in Your Content Strategy

You’ve probably attended a webinar or two (or more), but are you using them effectively as part of your overall content plan? In this blog post, we teach you the basics of hosting a webinar and how to use them effectively as you build out your content strategy and grow your business.




ar

Selling in Europe – How to Localize Your eCommerce Business for Local Markets

As a digital company, your business is not bound by conventional borders and has the freedom and opportunity to reach customers anywhere in the world. And just as you look outward for new markets, customers are also looking beyond their physical borders for their goods and services. As a study by KPMG shows, online buyers […]




ar

Tips for Getting Started with a Business Growth Framework

Growth is top of mind for most companies, but it can be tricky to get started with developing a growth framework. For one thing, most companies aren’t organized around growth, so thinking about growth requires a lot of collaboration between teams. Additionally, companies often don’t have easy access to all of the data they need to understand growth.




ar

Cool Start-up Interview Series – Mondly Languages

We’ve recently had the pleasure to chat with Andrei Nastasie, the affiliate program manager at Mondly Languages, an innovative language learning app that incorporates native language recordings, augmented reality and virtual reality to help people learn new languages. In this interview, he shares how Mondly started out, what it has been up to and what’s next for this creative company.




ar

News24 | Teargas, smoke in Maputo as police crack down on demonstrations

In some parts of the capital, protesters negotiated with police. In other parts there was no talking.




ar

News24 | At least 30 killed in Mozambique since start of election violence: HRW

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Friday that at least 30 people have been killed in Mozambique in almost three weeks of crackdowns on protests over a disputed presidential election.




ar

News24 | Somalia insists Ethiopia will not be part of new AU mission

Somalia insisted Saturday that Ethiopia will not be part of a new African Union peacekeeping mission, as the two nations remain locked in a dispute that has sent shivers through the Horn of Africa.




ar

News24 | Former president Mahama projected to unseat Ghana's ruling party in December election

Ghana's main opposition leader John Dramani Mahama looks set to win December's presidential election, an opinion poll showed on Monday.




ar

News24 | SA sold Côte d'Ivoire R3.2m worth of wine last year. Now the US wants a piece of that action

Côte d'Ivoire is sub Sahara Africa's biggest importer of wine, says the US department of agriculture, and it is time American companies take advantage of the market.




ar

Preparing Young Children for School

See the full guide Preparing Young Children for School Practice Guide › Recent research has identified practices that have the potential to prepare young children to benefit from the learning opportunities they will encounter in school.




ar

In Harmony with Nature

My father, the birder, is often excited to share his sightings with me — especially so this summer when he got back from a long-planned trip to South Africa. 153 species! I love how he finds joy and peace by connecting with the world through observing birds, interacting with fellow birders, and telling tales of his birding adventures. In so many wonderful ways, Dad’s daily routines and way of life are linked to nature and the birds he loves.




ar

Music to One’s Ears

Ever since that first childhood moment when I clapped two pot lids together and discovered the sounds that rang out, I’ve been fascinated by what sound can do to spark imagination and share information. I don’t use cookware as cymbals these days but am more quietly appreciative of how meaningful and beautiful the sounds around us can be.




ar

Getting Your First Grader Off to a Good Start: Tips for Families

First grade can bring a lot of changes! Even if your child had a great kindergarten year, there can be lots of new routines and expectations for first graders that can feel really different for students (and families). Here’s what you need to know.




ar

Engaging, Explicit, and Elaborated: An Initial Trial of Media-Enhanced Preschool Vocabulary Instruction

Children from backgrounds of poverty often lag behind more advantaged peers in early language skills, including breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. We report the results of a pilot study of an explicit and elaborated vocabulary intervention in preschool classrooms serving children from lower-income backgrounds. The intervention used multimodal instruction, including segments from public television children's programs and interactive games, to build children's knowledge of and semantic connections for 128 words across 18 weeks of daily lessons.




ar

Improve the performance of your Joomla articles (part 1)

The performance of the default article system in Joomla really sucks big time, that's a well know fact.

It''s actually one of the reasons we built K2 in the first place.

And as we venture into Joomla 4 territory, instead of seeing performance improvements (finally) for the entire database scheme, we actually witness new ways to mess up performance (if that was even possible). Apparently the Joomla core team likes to exercise who knows PHP's syntax better instead of actually building working code that doesn't break for extension developers every so.

Oh well, we're used to the mess.

Back to our topic.

Wanna improve the performance of the Joomla article system, especially in sites that filter/order content in various ways? Well, for starters add a few indices to the "content" table, e.g. using phpMyAdmin.

ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_publishup` (`publish_up`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_publishdown` (`publish_down`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_modifiedby` (`modified_by`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_created` (`created`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_modified` (`modified`);

Just remember to replace #__ with your actual database prefix for Joomla.

But what's the measurable improvement? Well, something like this after you apply the above changes (on a really busy site that sorts articles by published date, aka 99% of Joomla sites)...

Yeap.

And that's performance tip no.1. We'll come back with more in the future as we delve into the software architectural wonder that is Joomla 4.

Or do yourself a favour & switch to K2 which recently passed 4 million downloads, yeah! :)

To those who might say, hey why aren't you contributing that back to Joomla, well, our answer is that if you've ever contributed in Joomla, you know the painful process & bureaucracy and you juuuust might wish to keep your sanity.

Until next time.




ar

The Role of Word-, Sentence-, and Text-Level Variables in Predicting Guided Reading Levels of Kindergarten and First-Grade Texts

Texts classified according to guided reading levels (GRL) are ubiquitous in U.S. beginning reading classrooms. This study examined features of texts across three grade bands (kindergarten, early first grade, final first grade) and the 10 GRLs within these bands. The 510 texts came from three programs with different functions in beginning reading instruction: core, intervention, and content areas.




ar

Shared Reading in the Structured Literacy Era

Teacher question: Can you provide clarification on how to promote shared reading in the structured literacy era and how that differs from shared reading in the balanced literacy era. I would think a teacher could certainly initially read the text aloud to students to model fluency and expression, but then must ensure students can get the words off the page and reread by decoding the words, rather than parroting the teacher or memorizing the shared reading text that may be a rhyme/song that is catchy. Shanahan's response:




ar

Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print: Mapping Early Literacy

The “Reading Peaceniks” The authors of this article are a group of researchers and practitioners who are looking to end the divisiveness of the “reading wars” — and help children learn to read and write with competence and pleasure. See the list of contributing editors as well as the 25 nationally recognized colleagues who support this effort.




ar

Beyond Labels and Agendas: Research Teachers need to Know about Phonics and Phonological Awareness

This article describes the current findings on phonics and phonological awareness instruction. It uses a question & answer format to explore 10 common questions that teachers ask about teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. Here are a few key questions addressed in the article: What are phonics and phonemic awareness? Should phonemic awareness be paired with print and taught together? Should phonological awareness be coordinated with phonics instruction? What is the best sequence for teaching phonics?




ar

The mysterious popularity of ginger ales on airlines

A recent article on Chow.com identifies a trend in American aviation catering: The surprisingly high demand for ginger ale on America’s planes. Why ginger ale, and not Coke, 7UP, or Bloody Mary mix? The most popular theory among flight attendants is that it relieves nausea. “If [passengers] have motion sickness, it settles their stomach,” says Elizabeth […]

The post The mysterious popularity of ginger ales on airlines first appeared on UPGRADE: TRAVEL BETTER.




ar

Be careful not to touch anything at the Wynn Las Vegas

Family friends recently returned from a trip to the Wynn Las Vegas, but the first story they had to tell wasn’t about luxurious accommodations, gambling, restaurants, or shows. It was about the snacks on top of their minibar. The motion-detector minibar wasn’t new to me. Those are bad enough: You move any item in the […]

The post Be careful not to touch anything at the Wynn Las Vegas first appeared on UPGRADE: TRAVEL BETTER.




ar

Traveling to India: A Deep Dive into the World of Andar Bahar

Introduction India is a place full of diverse cultures and traditions that offers many fascinating experiences for curious travelers. One such experience that provides a unique glimpse into Indian culture is the classic card game Andar Bahar. With its simple yet engaging gameplay, Andar Bahar has been a beloved pastime across India for generations. For […]

The post Traveling to India: A Deep Dive into the World of Andar Bahar first appeared on UPGRADE: TRAVEL BETTER.




ar

Adding PayPal Payment Buttons to Your WordPress Sidebar Easily

Many blog owners have recently started to monetize their websites by selling physical or digital products to their loyal customers from their sidebar. If you have a loyal following, perhaps you run a small blog from a WordPress website, there is no reason why you cannot try to make a little side cash by creating […]

The post Adding PayPal Payment Buttons to Your WordPress Sidebar Easily appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.




ar

AI / Deep Learning applications course – with hands-on experience

    New workshop in London / remote Link - Enterprise AI workshop – Sep 2018 – in London or remote     AI / Deep Learning applications course/ mentoring program – hands-on experience with limited spaces I am pleased to announce a new course on AI Applications The course combines elements of teaching, coaching and [...]




ar

AI labs – Learning unsupervised learning through Robotics

We are launching an AI lab. The goal is to learn unsupervised learning through Robotics (Cobots) Long seen as a poor cousin to supervised learning -  with Variational autoencoders, Reinforcement learning and  Generative-Adversarial networks , unsupervised learning techniques have moved beyond the limitations of autoencoders. From Oct 2018 to March 2019 , we are running a [...]




ar

Learn AI and Data Science rapidly based only on high school math

  What if you could learn AI and Data Science based on knowledge you already know? You have an opportunity to accelerate your learning of AI in a unique way through this limited, early bird offer Here is a simple observation: The mathematical foundations of Data Science rest on four elements i.e. Linear Algebra, Probability [...]




ar

Coding for #AI and #machinelearning – online course/workshop

Coding for #AI and #machinelearning – online course/workshop We are exploring a new way to learning how to code for AI and Machine Learning by applying ideas of  deliberate practise Starting Oct 2018 – the workshop has limited places Please contact info@futuretext.com if you want to sign up for our online workshop (300 USD)   [...]




ar

AI labs – a club for #AI research and a chance to gain hands-on experience with AI

  We have been working on this idea over the summer and have now launched the next stage of the AI labs in London Here are some more details. Think of AI labs – as a club for AI research AI labs addresses three problems a)  Today, even if you are working on Machine Learning [...]






ar

Bitcoin’s market cap briefly overtakes silver’s at $89,000 level

Earlier today, Bitcoin’s market cap briefly overtook that of silver, as the world’s first cryptocurrency reached never-before-seen heights. CoinMarketCap data… Continue reading Bitcoin’s market cap briefly overtakes silver’s at $89,000 level

The post Bitcoin’s market cap briefly overtakes silver’s at $89,000 level appeared first on ReadWrite.






ar

As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU

Continuing to set records, Pepe Unchained recently achieved a new milestone after reaching $26 million. The project’s presale has now… Continue reading As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU

The post As Pepe Unchained Launch Date Nears, Analyst Makes ‘Massive’ Prediction For PEPU appeared first on ReadWrite.




ar

Meme Coins Are Soaring as Pepe Unchained Layer 2 ICO Raises $27.5 Million

November has turned into a remarkable month for cryptocurrency, with Bitcoin and meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Pepe… Continue reading Meme Coins Are Soaring as Pepe Unchained Layer 2 ICO Raises $27.5 Million

The post Meme Coins Are Soaring as Pepe Unchained Layer 2 ICO Raises $27.5 Million appeared first on ReadWrite.




ar

News24 Business | Facebook, Instagram group bets on normal-looking AR glasses, celeb AI voices

Meta launched AI chatbots voiced by Hollywood celebrities including Judi Dench and John Cena on Wednesday, betting its billions of users are eager to embrace artificial intelligence.




ar

News24 Business | Uber safari: E-hailing app now offering Cape Town visitors a one-day game drive

Uber Safari is launching this week, offering riders in Cape Town the opportunity to go on a one-day game drive to a private reserve for $200.




ar

News24 Business | Govt looks set to change BEE rules that may be keeping Starlink out of SA

Communications and Digital Technology Minister Solly Malatsi will issue a policy direction on equity alternatives to the 30% equity employment rule in the communications industry.




ar

News24 Business | Samsung issues rare apology for poor results in tech 'crisis'

Samsung Electronics issued a rare apology and acknowledged on Tuesday it was facing a "crisis" over its technological competitiveness, reflected in a disappointing profit guidance, despite a global AI boom.