Why You Should Learn Tech Skills

What are the most wanted Tech Skills?

With the evolution of technology, there's an imminent change in every industry and they will all become tech companies in the future. The need for using tech tools and hiring tech talent is increasing every day, and it's the only way for workers to stay ahead.

Should we all learn at least one tech skill? Yes, we should. Regardless of whether you want to work in a tech company or not, having a tech skill at your disposal is something that will level up your experience and make you more prepared for a professional career.

Despite what you may be thinking right now, you don't necessarily need to have a bachelor's degree in computer science to learn a tech skill. There are cheaper, short-term options that you can try like coding bootcamps or online courses. Here, we'll show you some of the reasons why you should start learning a tech skill and where you can learn them.

It Makes You a Problem Solver

Most tech skills, like data science, software development, or machine learning, function to solve a problem in a logical sense. Learning how to code will make you practice logic every day, see problems at a bigger scale, and discovering new paths to solve problems.

This isn't something that will only help you pay bills, learning how to code provides you deep analytical thinking and you'll soon become a problem solver once you start practicing every day. Problem-solving skills can be applied to every situation, not only when in coding.

It Makes You Future Proof

Almost every company is becoming tech-focused regardless of the industry. Just think about how many jobs that used to be manned by humans that are now automated by machines.

Almost everything is automated these days, from self-driving cars that will replace drivers to bookkeeping software that doesn't need human intervention. This leans the scale for people who have programming or any other tech skill. Being able to understand these activities will help you to ensure your role in the future, where almost everything is automated.

Most Tech Jobs Are Lucrative

Have you ever browsed Glassdoor to see the average salary of a data analyst, machine-learning engineer, or even a software developer? Most of these professions earn from $77,000 to over $123,000.

Salary rates differ in every case, but let's take data science as an example. Data analysts make from $100,000 to $123,000. The justification for this is there's a huge demand for them but supplies are low. As a result, data scientists end up having great salaries. This phenomenon occurs in several other tech jobs.

One should also consider the case of a software developer, who, on the other hand, is highly demanded yet supplies are steady. Software developers make less than data scientists, but the annual salary is still approximately $100,000 per year.

Tech Skills Help Companies Save

Saving money is important in everyday life. This is also true for companies that wish to expand. Having a basic knowledge of computer science will help you not only save money but also save time.

Calling the tech support department can be frustrating as the solutions it provides may not be suitable. Time is a resource that can be wasted when dealing with unnecessary problems you can solve yourself.

And the same happens with projects. If you have an idea and want to bring it to reality, but no one understands your explanation, the project might not be accomplished. Having the tech skills required for that specific project will help you generate desired outcomes.

Most Wanted Tech Skills

Now that you are familiar with some of the tech skills, it is time to consider which path you want to take: a bachelor's degree or a tech Bootcamp. Regardless, you should be able to learn something you enjoy with a good salary. Here are some of the most in-demand tech skills these days:

Software Development

The ability to develop software gives you the flexibility to choose which tasks to automate at your company. We know some tasks can be repetitive and time-consuming. Processes like verifying data, dealing with accounting math, and doing statistics are tasks that a computer could do, and perhaps even better than us.

Besides, if you're creating your own company, and want to build an in-house digital platform, software development skills will help you a lot. There's a school where you can learn this skill in 20 weeks. Thinkful's immersive software development course will prepare you for the development of killer apps. You'll learn all fundamentals of software engineering and programming languages like Node.js, MySQL, and others.

Data Science

If you enjoy math and statistics, data science is for you. Data science refers to the ability to find meaningful insights in large datasets to make better decisions, prove a hypothesis, or find patterns. To become a data scientist, you need to understand programming languages like Python.

Galvanize is one of the leading schools in data science. Galvanize Data Science Bootcamp is oriented towards decision making. You'll learn how to work with machine learning, the statistical process, data analysis, and data visualization.

UX and UI Design

'Design' sounds like something artistic, right? Yes, but UX and UI design are far the traditional sense of 'design'. UX and UI design are related to user experience and how to improve it.

However, UI is more oriented to the interface and functionality of a software product. There's a reason why many users prefer to use Apple's iOS. The operating system is intuitive and comfortable for users. This is what UI design is capable of.

With Springboard's UX and UI design courses, you won't need prior skills or experience to learn. You'll learn everything you need to know about this skill from scratch and you'll be trained with practical classes with client-facing practices.

Mobile Application Development

We're all mobile users and we understand the importance of mobile apps. The reason why mobile app developers are in high demand is every company wants to have an in-house mobile application for users. These days, we spend more time on our phones than any other device.

Mobile developers work with Android and iOS operative systems, with each one working with a different language. Android developers work with Java, while iOS ones work with Swift or Objective-C.

App Academy's mobile development course will guide you through all of the processes of creating a functional mobile app. You'll have real-time practices that will allow you to track the performance of your project.

In Conclusion

No matter which path you take, learning a tech skill will open many opportunities that will boost your career or company. We know that technology is always changing, therefore, you need to stay ahead.

Doggie Dooley

Things I learned with the new Doggie Dooley

The Doggie Dooley is a way to turn dog poop into fertilizer. Basically you no longer throw poop in a bag and into the trash - now you scoop poop and place it in the Doggie Dooley - which is buried in your yard. It works let a mini septic system.

Five Things I learned

1. It was really easy to assemble the main Doggie compartment. You get five extra screws.
2. You need to dig two holes. One hole that the Doggie Dooley sits in. The second hole is 10??? wide where the poop actually goes when you place it in the Doggie Dooley.
3. The problem is that the second hole has to be 42??? deep. This is in addition to the 16??? from the first hole. There aren???t many shovels that can go that far down.
4. I ran into lots of roots while I was digging. I found that using hedge clippers help cut through some of the bigger roots. We knew that we would run into roots and selected a location where it would be a minimal issue.
5. After digging for a while, I ran into lots of rocks. It made it difficult to continue digging a deeper hole. I decided to stop and see how it works out.

Hope for the best

Looking forward to seeing if the Doggie Dooley works out. We do have to put a lot of water in the hole.

The hole is far away from any plants so I don???t think we???ll see any ground nutrient improvement.

Handling Coughs and Colds in the Elderly

Useful guide to caring for sick elderly parents

British Cough maker Covonia just put out a very timely guide on handing coughs and cold in the Elderly.

It's a very useful guide to help to care for an elderly person who is sick with a strong cough.

https://www.covonia.co.uk/coughs-colds-elderly-guide/

Things You'll Learn in This Guide

This guide in a one-page info-guide with some links at the end for additional information.

You learn why the elderly are more vulnerable to getting sick.

Quick bullet points with all the signs and symptoms of the flu - from the British National Institute of health.

Easy things that you can do to prevent the cold and flu from the elderly

How the family and caregiver can help when taking care of the elderly.

Useful Guide in These Times

If your caring for an elderly person, or know someone that is. This guide can help you look for the signs of the flu and cold.

Home Mortgage Refinancing for Veterans

Help for Veterans looking to refinance

During a somewhat uncertain time, we are all looking to make careful choices to protect our families and our health. Many of us are also carefully reviewing our budgets to cut excess expenses to keep our financial health in shape. If you are a veteran considering whether to refinance your home mortgage, take a look at the resources below to help guide this choice.

7 Steps to Refinancing Your Home Mortgage
How do you best manage a successful mortgage refinancing campaign? Make these key steps the cornerstones of your refinancing plan.

Find the Best Mortgage Lenders and Refinancing Companies
Do your research to learn more about different types of loans, eligibility requirements and what you should look for when searching for the right mortgage lender for your needs.

Home Appraisals: Home Appraiser, Property Value & Tips
You should know a little about the process and how it works, both to decide if a home appraisal is in your best interest and to take any possible steps to influence the final appraisal number.

How to Improve Your Credit Score
Key takeaways include: Pay your bills on time, pay down your credit card balances to keep your credit utilization ratio low, and don't close old credit card accounts or apply for too many new ones.

Mortgage Assistance Programs for Veterans
There are several government-backed options that make the home-buying process more accessible to active and former military service members.??

What is a VA Loan?
Available to eligible veterans with key advantages such as: No down payment or mortgage insurance required and no pre-payment penalty for paying off a loan early.

VA Home Loans: A Guide For America???s Veterans
The ins and outs of VA loans explained.

Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan
Refinancing lets you replace your current loan with a new one under different terms. Find out if you???re eligible???and how to apply.

Social Distancing Tip

Some good advice on this time of Social Distancing

Many people in the United States are now facing Social Distancing. That is, they are told to avoid social interaction to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Here's some great advice that Shane Landrum, PhD offerend on Twitter:

Advice from a historian in the Boston area: Start keeping a journal today, ideally a handwritten one if that???s within your ability. Write about what you???re seeing in the news, how yr friends are responding, what is closed in yr neighborhood or city or state or country. Save it.

I worked at a news organization on 9/11/2001, & I recognize the ways that my very online professional networks communicate in a time of global crisis. What???s going on this week is like that. The feeling in my gut about historical importance is nearly the same.

Sometimes you know you???re living through an event that will be in the history books very large. I study the history of public health and information technology and law and politics. There???s so much going on that touches all of those things this week.

We???ll be able to know what happened this week/month/year after the story rolls forward another 10 or 20 years. But personal stories don???t make it into the history books unless people are writing them down in the first place. Keep a journal if you can.

Write your stories down about what???s happening now, and tomorrow, and Monday. Do it by hand, on paper. The hand-writing will adjust your brain. It will take you offline and out of the swirl of news and hopefully, for a moment, into a little bit of peace in the midst of crisis.

Helpful Guide Declutter Your Home

Found a great site to help you Declutter your home.

It's really beginning to feel like spring around here. That also means it's time to start the annual spring cleaning.

The worst part is trying to figure out where to start.

One really good resource is the The Ultimate Home Decluttering Guide from militaryhomesearch.com. They wrote up an excellent guide to help jump start your spring cleaning.

https://www.militaryhomesearch.com/home-decluttering-guide.php

Five Reasons to Visit The Site

•   The site contains 10 strategies to help produce better Devluttering Habits.
•   Tips for cleaning out the closet - one of my weak points.
•   Why a well orgainzed house can actually save you money - you don't need to buy things that you may already have but don't know where they are.
•   How to set time limits so that your not overdoing it.
•   Understand the 9-things that are behind the Psychology of Clutter.

Google Trends Tips and Tricks

Learn how to get the most out of Google Trends.

Finding the latest keywords for SEO can be hard. You not only want to use keywords that people are searching for but you want to use keywords that are trending.

Google Trends is one way to find out what keywords are trending, but it can be complex to understand it.

Adam from FATJOE wrote a very interesting article about Google Trends with a focus on search operator on Google Trends. I enjoyed reading it and think its worth reading to understand how to get the most out of Google Trends.

https://fatjoe.com/google-trends/

Five Reasons to Check out the Article

• You'll understand the Five Different search platforms that Google Trends uses to collect data. (I only thought the data came from one source.)
• You can actually search for industry general trends. It's a cool trick to see general keywords that are trending right now.
• Did you know that you can sign up for email alerts based on specific topics of your choice?
• Adam teaches you a trick on how to get more details from a trend chart by downloading the data and organizing it in Google Sheets.
• You can actually search for trends as far back as the 1800s! Learn how Google is able to search trends before computers were around.

Useful Tool

I enjoyed reading Adam's article as it help me understand how to get more out of Google Trends data.

How to Improve the Visual Aspect of Your Branding Strategy

Five tips on improving your online brand

When it comes to building a brand, a large proportion of the strategy lies in creating great visual characteristics that people can easily remember. Your branding strategy is one of the things that can launch your brand high in the real world, and you cannot build a successful company without a good brand awareness strategy.

When it comes to the visual characteristics of your brand, things get a bit complicated just because sometimes people are confused about what is a good idea. Since your visuals like logo, color, slogan and etc. are the first thing that people interact with, you need to make them so they will enhance the ???wow??? factor when someone sees it.

In this article, we will go through some of the ways you can improve the visual aspect of your branding strategy.

Consistency

Consistency is very important when it comes to the visuals of your brand. The biggest mistake from new company owners is that they spend too much time building their brand visuals like a logo or slogan, and then they remain inactive which means there is nowhere to show those visuals.

You must be active with your visuals and present them in a good way so people can interact with your brand. No matter how good are your brand visuals, if people can???t see them, it will be all for nothing. So make sure you establish a good network of promoting your company and always stay consistent when it comes to sharing brand awareness posts.

The job is not finished by designing your logo

People spend so much time and money on designing the perfect logo and often stop with the branding visuals. It is important to note that your job is not done by creating a logo. You need to incorporate that brand identity in practice. For example, you can move on to employee uniforms, store design, social media post design, and etc. Remember, building a brand is just like telling a story. The more visuals you incorporate about your brand, the better understanding people will have about your company.

Understand your target market

Before you start creating any kind of visuals for your brand, it is very important that you understand your target market. In other words, you need to know to whom you are speaking with your brand and what are their characteristics, desires, and requirements.

If you miss your target audience, it may result in catastrophic for your brand. Once you know your target market, you need to create visuals that will be appealing to them and still illustrate what your company is about. This will massively increase the chance that customers will choose your brand over your competitors.

Don???t focus only on social media

Yes, social media is probably the best way to build your global branding strategy. However, as we mentioned before, you need to tell a story about your company, and social media has its limits. You need to focus on all visual aspects of your brand, from in-store promotions to outdoor advertising or email marketing.

Evoke emotions

Nowadays, people choose their brands over what they feel about them, and the visual aspect is essential for evoking emotions. The best way to create a popular brand is by establishing connections with customers. All big brands use this kind of strategy for provoking a strong emotional reaction. Remember, visuals are a much better representation of your company than words, and you can increase customer willingness to make a purchase.

These are some of the tips for improving the visual characteristics of your brand. It is a long-term process that needs to be done just right in order to have a positive result. Following these tips will launch your brand as fast as a horse launching on the Kentucky Derby. The key is to go for a business that you feel passionate about. That way you will improve your storytelling, and you will know what your customers expect from you.

Cost of Movies in Theaters

High Cost of movies are keeping people away from movies

Recently I went to the AMC theater in Framingham to see the newest Stars Wars - about 6 weeks after it was released. I was a bit surprised by how much it cost for two to go to the movies.

This just shows you why fewer people are going to the movie theaters:

However buying or renting movies can be a cheaper option:

Obviously you don???t get to see the movie on a large screen, However, it???s a cheap way for a family to see a movie that they don???t have to see in theaters.

Today???s home theaters are much better than those from the 80s and 90s. Movie Graphics and sound are pretty good - still no match for the large theater - but certainly a good reason why people avoid seeing some shows on the big screen.

How to Come Up With Great Ideas for Blog Posts Constantly

How to get Blog ideas when you hit a writers block

This is an issue that almost every blogger struggles with. After a while of writing blog posts, you start to exhaust your topics and cannot come up with something new and creative to keep the spark alive. Coming up with new and trending content is very important if you want to create a successful blog. It is something that will keep your audience engaged at all times, and at the same time, attract new people to visit your website.

Fortunately, there are different ways you can make sure you come up with great ideas for blog posts, and we will cover some of them in this article.

Create an idea file

Creativity cannot be controlled, and you don't know when a new and interesting idea is going to strike. That is why you need to be prepared to write it down. Since the idea might come and go, it is very important that you write it down and keep it safe for future submission. You can create a document or spreadsheet, where you will write down all of the ideas that pop into your head. However, that file must be accessible at all times (like an app on your phone), since you don't know when the ideas are going to strike.

Ask your audience

In order to receive an honest answer about what kind of topic to write about, you should ask your audience. Creating a positive relationship with your audience is crucial for success, and it will become helpful as they will give you valuable data to optimize your blog.

It is no shame to ask the readers what kind of content they prefer to read and optimize your blog to suit their needs. It is a win-win situation, as you will make your audience happy, and at the same time, they will provide topics for you to write about. Even though it is a simple method, only a few people are actually doing it.

Identify Trends

The hunt for the next big trend never stops when you are running a blog. This means that you are on a constant search for the topic that most people are interested in at the moment. However, identifying the next trend is a bit complicated since you need to establish thorough research. Fortunately, there are few tools that can help you with that.

• Google Trends - Is the most commonly used tool for searching trending topics over a specific timeframe.
• AnswerThePublic - is a website where you can enter any term and get a massive list of synonyms and related terms that people search for.
• BuzzSumo - You can find out ranks for topics and what are people are writing about by entering a keyword.

Watch Your competitors

Obviously, sometimes you need to focus on your competitors in order to get the right idea for writing engaging content. It is not stealing if you are simply looking at what topics they cover and how they perform with the audience. If you decide to steal an idea for a topic, try to infuse it with your own brand flavor and transform it to suit your blog.

Expand your existing content

Sometimes if your existing content works, you just need to dig deeper into the subject. You should search for the best performing content on your blog and write an in-depth analysis of that subject covering other areas.

By covering some of the existing content, the process might lead you to new ideas for a topic that you've never published on your blog.

These are some of the ways you can keep your content fresh at all times. Remember, since this is a creative process, you cannot expect that the ideas will come to you as fast as a running quarterback on the SuperBowl. There is a saying that states: "Foolish bloggers go out in search of ideas, efficient bloggers allow ideas to come to them." So, keep finding new methods to inspire yourself, and you'll be laughing.