A Freelancer's Collection of Scammed Articles

Limited bandwidth is no longer satisfactory these days. Unlimited calls and texts being included in data plans are now part of the norms, and any mobile site tab that takes more than 3 seconds to load risk being closed without waiting for it to load completely. This makes data speed just as important when considering which data plans to get. With 2018 creeping up close on us, we have reviewed the best unlimited data plans for a single individual.

Aside from the unlimited talk, text and data, at just $70 each month the T-Mobile One Plan lets you stream up to 480p without much issues, which means that you can stream Netflix on the go with standard DVD quality wherever you go. Although this plan supports only 3G hotspot, you can utilize the data plan worry-free as there are no hidden charges in their data plan. What you see and get is what you pay for! Overall, T-Mobile One definitely takes the lead in the list of mobile carriers in its data limits, capped at 30GB with 4G LTE data before your data speed gets slowed down to 3G speeds. Frequent flier? This plan gives you access to unlimited free GoGo Wi-Fi on selected flights! Best for frequent travelers seeking good monetary value in their purchases without demanding for the best quality.

Slightly pricier than the first option, this plan provides up to 22GB of data before throttling whenever there is network congestion, and the 4G LTE speeds enable you to stream HD videos with zero worries. If you frequently use your phone as a hotspot, this plan is perfect for you as it provides up to 10GB of data at high 4G LTE speeds as well, capping at 128kbps speed after you reach the threshold. Want some extra perks? You have access to unlimited talk and texts, even to over 120 countries from the USA! To give you that final push to get this data plan, you can even get a $25 discount on AT&T Direct TV and free HBO credits. What’s more to ask for with all these perks? This plan is perfect for regular hotspot users seeking perfection even in their daily video streaming.

If you are simply looking for the cheapest option, Sprint Unlimited is your go-to at only $50 a month. Capping at the lowest limit out of the three options, this plan provides up to 23GB of full 4G LTE speed data before slowing down to an unspecified speed. You can stream up to 1080p, and use up to 8Mbps while you are gaming before the service slows down. Music streaming meanwhile is capped at 1.5Mbps, which is just about sufficient, before the data throttles as well. Up to 4G LTE hotspot data is provided, before it gets slowed down to a 2G speed, significantly poorer than the other two plans. While this plan is still sustainable at the beginning of 2018, it’s important to keep in mind that the data plan will raise its price by $10 beginning from the 20^th of July, 2018.

Bottom Line: If price is not a concern, go for AT&T Unlimited Plus. Intermediate value can be found with T-Mobile One, and Sprint can ease your financial worries a little more than other plans.

                Whether you are trying to build your own professional personal website, an E-commerce site or a simply fashion blog, it can be a little frustrating if you want to customize your website from scratch but do not have much coding or computing knowledge. Learning HTML5 doesn’t seem to cut it, and learning Javascript for the more advanced features can be very difficult for those who were not trained in the field. While using platforms like Wix or Unbounce can be one way of going about it, these platforms were still not as customizable as hoped. We were looking for a simple user-friendly interface with plenty of options & ideas which we can use in the long term for any kind of webpages that we might be interested to build.

                Being a one of the best Joomla templates supplier, Joomlashine did not disappoint at providing more than just a powerful Content Management System (CMS). To make Joomla! even more user-friendly, Joomlashine came up with their own extensions to make your web-building experience butter-smooth. One of the features that we loved the best was the JSN PageBuilder3 for Joomla! which makes the website design process a lot easier with drag-and-drop functions. We were able to get the design we wanted done with a few simple clicks and there’s so much that we could customize! There’s a lot more where that came from, and anyone interested to know what services & packages Joomlashine can continue reading on their free downloadable e-book or this article to find out more as well.

For anyone that is new to Joomla, a free and open-source CMS for business & creative publishing, there’s a handbook to guide you through which you could find under their support tab for you to download. While some might worry that the e-book will be too complicated to understand, or filled with too little information, Joomlashin has the upper edge where they provided an e-book covering all topics from some information on the Joomla! CMS – front-end and back-end inclusive – to installing Joomla! 3x, content creation, organizing and designing, to explanations on the Joomla! Components, modules & plugins! There’s also videos available to show you how to download their templates.

                Whether you are new or seasoned to the world of website design & building, the templates available on this platform is bound to impress you. With several ideas in mind about what an ideal website might look like – professional & neat, visual-heavy with minimal text presentation, something akin to a minimalistic blog – anyone would be spoilt for choice with the options available even to free users. The plus point is that even if you don’t find enough options for the category you are looking for, Joomlashine prioritized quality over quantity and you will find that the templates they provide are of high-quality and polished. Not sure if you will like what you download? There’s a live demo option for every template available on their website for you to consider before you download it.

Kudos to the support team of Joomlashine! While free users get only limited support, the live chat support is still prominent and easily accessible if you have any questions. If you are one of the paying users for their packages like us, you would find that their full support alone makes the whole package worth the price. Their responses are quick and you can get to your solutions with just a simple chat request. The few snags that we hit along the way were solved within minutes because the staff were well-equipped with knowledge on their platform.

                Although a free account is alright too, we found that Joomlashine’s packages come with a great deal of benefits. For one, there’s huge savings when you purchase their annual plans or even their lifetime plan. We are currently subscribed to their All-in-One Package at $299 a year, which is understandably their most popular package. You get unlimited domains – which means that agencies can utilize this function well, and the products are free for life once you have downloaded them. What we loved most was that the graphic source files were accessible to us so that we could edit the layered graphics to our own liking. Liked your first-year experience using it? There’s a 20% renewal discount when you want to continue using your selected package and if you chose the Lifetime Package, you won’t even be needing this discount. The support we obtained so far is so efficient that we are considering getting the lifetime package when our company budget renews next year.

                Being an open-source CRM, Joomla! would already have some pretty decent plugins and add-ons that can be explored and used the more experienced we get with this model. However, Joomlashine has taken the effort to make your Joomla!-based website look more appealing with extensions such as ImageShow, EasySlider and UniForm to list a few. This was also where we found the paid packages to be worth the money, since our interns who were not too familiar with Joomla! CRM were able to obtain full support from their support team, all while saving about 85% for the extensions package.

                All of Joomlashine’s templates can be downloaded at zero cost. If you have qualms about spending on a platform that you aren’t too familiar with, Joomlashin offers an upgrade from the free edition for which you can experience all the PRO features for 15 days. As mentioned earlier in the article, they have support available for all users even if you have not made any purchases. Other than the live chat, users can also get forum support where users can contribute to each other’s inquiries and issues. Users can also get a refund if they are not satisfied with the products they bought on Joomlashine within a month after the purchase is made, which offers some measure of security & professionalism.

                Overall, our experience with Joomlashine has been excellent. Their products and services catered well for us as a website-building agency, and all of our staff were able to understand how to use it and later proceed to use Joomlashine’s products efficiently. Our clients love what we make for them, so it goes without saying that we do too! 

                Digital marketing – pay-per-click, effective landing pages; These are not new anymore. However, as technology develops, it is taking more and more for users to feel engaged with products being advertised. Loading speed and engagement rates are more important than ever with the current consumer base. Below, we review some of the more recent technologies to aid with digital marketing which are gaining popularity, slowly but surely.

                Featuring a group of monitors on a wall to play a large video advertisement or display several images to form one large cohesive image at once, video walls are the new frontiers of billboard advertising. You can view an example of the video wall in action in Las Vegas, when it was first featured in 2013. While the cost may be sky high as it is still a relatively new technology, you can be sure that your advertisement will be more attention-grabbing than any other advertising methods you have seen in your entire lifetime. By placing these video walls in a strategic high-traffic location and drawing users to engage with your display in high-end video walls, you are advertising your products with a very high engagement rate, welcoming more visitors to your brand and product as this new technology in action gets shared on social media worldwide.

                Can’t be replying messages all the time? Facebook has an instant replies feature which allows you to set up some simple pre-set replies to help you answer your potential clients’ frequently asked questions. You can use this feature to set a welcome greeting, and inform them that their inquiries have been received. The chat bots can also be programmed to help you engage with your clients without actually doing so – one of the best examples would be the chatbot set up by RedBull. All you have to do to try this feature is to go to their Facebook page and click message. The bot has been programmed to provide you with their newest events and news so that you feel more connected to their products.

                With the majority of business users being on mobile nowadays instead using their personal computers these days, loading time becomes extremely important to market your products digitally. A 3-second delay can cause up to 60% of users abandoning the page, which is where these AMPs come in. By converting your current business website to an AMP, you will be accelerating the loading speed of your page while still maintaining the aesthetic values and high performance that your website has be it for e-commerce, product pages, date-booking or just a simple blog. An e-commerce site built on this platform will help you to market your products more efficiently while increasing your customer base!

                There are still plenty of new technology on the way in 2018, and we can’t wait to unmask them all. While AMPs, as an example, have already been used by several high-ranking websites such as Huffington Post and the chatbot instant replies utilized by various big businesses nowadays, there are still space for improvement for these features and they are continuously adding more and more benefits to help you market your products effectively. Meanwhile, just hang on to these three features and see if you can find a way to integrate them into your business!

Sources:

http://www.522productions.com/video-walls-are-drawing-more-attention-and-more-customers

http://unwritten.digital/facebook-instant-replies-business/

https://www.ampproject.org/

                If a picture speaks a thousand words, what would a video say? Sometimes, photographs just don’t quite cut it for when we want to keep a memory safe with us – it’s a video that can capture the atmosphere, the voices and the turbulence in any places and scenarios. A photo can capture the delightful smile of your child at their 5^th birthday, but their bright laughter with a childlike voice can only be recorded with a video. Knowing that there are people out there wanting to get a camcorder or at least a camera with a decent recording quality, we have compiled a short list for you to narrow down your choices from.

                With a video capturing resolution of 1920 x 1080 full HD, you can be sure that you are recording in the best quality possible to pick up even those miniscule details with this product. If you think that this resolution is too taxing on your camera’s memory, you can also opt for a smaller HD resolution of 1280 x 720, or an even smaller one at 640 x 480HD. So, depending on where you might want to choose to publish your videos to, you can select from these 3 video capture resolutions available; As an example, the smallest resolution could be used for videos to be published on Facebook. This camera also features an optical zoom of up to 5x through its 18 megapixels optical sensor. Just imagine the possibilities of recording from afar and still having it show up clearly enough on the highest resolution available! Its weight at around only 1.1lbs is also a good feature, since one can carry it around and record for some time without the weight stressing your waist joints.

                If you don’t find the optical zoom function being of much importance, this product could be for you. While it does not have the zoom function itself, there’s a very high ISO range from 100 to 12800 with boosts, meaning that users can shoot videos and photos even in extremely dim or bright lighting with clear frames. This camera also has a relatively high video capture resolution at 1080p HD, making it one of the best camera for videos for users seeking simple yet sufficient functionality. The optical sensor resolution is also the same with the above model at 18MP, but there is one big bonus in this model; it features a wireless technology for users as well; which means that users recording from this camera does not even need to eject the memory card or connect it to a USB wire to have the videos streamed on a WiFi-enabled screen for video-sharing! There is also a wind filter to filter out background noises for your videos so that their clarity extends to the audio as well.

Sony DSCHX80/B Point & Shoot Camera

                First of all, this product allows you to have an optical zoom of up to not 1, not 2, but 30x. Other than this zooming feature, you can also record in 3 formats, although the winning format would be the Full HD 1920x1080 XAVC S format at up to 50Mbps recording with allows users to record freely without video compression adding noise to scenes involving a high range of motion & actions. The Linear PCM feature allows for high-quality audio to match the video as well. The other two recording options, MP4 HD along with the WiFi function, lets you upload your highly compressed video onto the web straight from your camera while the AVCHD has resolutions suitable for HDTV & burning into Blu-Ray discs. In addition, Sony’s Optical SteadyShot image stabilization featuring 5-axis helps you to record while you are on the move, maintaining focus on your subject and even while zooming in. This could be ideal for sports fans looking to record their favourite sports players in action – even on the field.

                Also featuring Full HD 1080p recording as well as the 5-axis hybrid optical image stabilization, you can ensure that your videos will be in maximum clarity even when you are recording while moving with this handheld camera. You can record from long range since this camcorder lets you zoom up to 50x optical zoom quality and even up to 90x intelligent zooming. What makes this possibly the best camera for videos is the fact that it also has BSI sensors that allows for low-light video quality maintenance as well as a two-channel zoom microphone that lets you record clearly from a distance as well. If you like creativity in your video recordings, this camcorder allows you to utilize various effects available, inclusive of time lapse recording, miniature effect, 8mm movie or even the silent movie option. It is also made with the handheld experience in mind, so its weight of about 0.5 pounds is just perfect and superlight for a long duration of handheld recording as well.

8 Technologies That Could Change Digital Marketing Forever

With technology rapidly changing and improving, there’s no telling which direction it might go from one day to the next – While services like AdWords & Bing Ads were all the rage previously, as these technologies advance, there are a lot more for digital marketers and advertising agencies to consider adding on to their business; even more so since more traditional media such as TV or printed advertisements are slowly dying off. It is then extremely important for advertising agencies and businesses to keep up with the digital marketing trends & technologies and get into them before they become too famous or mainstream for their advertisements to make a difference. Below, we have reviewed 8 of the most recent technologies that can change digital marketing forever. Most of them have not rolled out to the public yet, instead only limited to certain states or regions as more beta testing is under way.

                Search advertising is out, and voice search marketing could be the next up and trending form of advertising technology. Google Home works as an in-home device, and is almost fully hands-free. Activated with a simple, “OK, Google”, this home assistant can be integrated with other smart home devices to utilize Google Chromecast and play movies or music on the devices connected to it. Currently having about 23.8% of the voice-enabled speaker market, it is projected that by year 2019 39.3% of millennials will own at least one smart assistance in their home. Users can utilize this home assistant to get the answers to a simple query such as “Cheapest hotel rates in Budapest on the 29^th of December 2018,” by just voicing the question out loud. When and where will voice search advertising stand in the next few years? No one knows yet, but Google has informed that they are still years away from monetizing voice searches like how search, display and other ad formats have been for the past years.

                This also brings changes to the keyword selection and heightens the importance of SEO keywords, even those long-tail phrases that users tend to submit over voice searches as compared to text searches. As an example, users will search “gas station near me” on Google, but through voice search, most of them are used to submitting queries such as “Where are the gas stations near me?”

Amazon Echo

                Similar to Google Home but holding a much higher voice-controlled speaker market at a staggeringly high 70% in 2018 alone, Alexa users along with Google Home users have been known to use natural language more – which clearly displays the user intents. As mentioned above, vendors and business owners have to start considering adding question phrases to their digital marketing campaigns to ensure that their business shows up first on the list to be read out loud by Alexa or Google. Unlike the traditional text searches with queries such as “fish food”, where users could simply be reviewing the types of fish food, or shops selling fish food nearby, voice search users will reveal their intentions clearly so that the search results are highly relevant. They will search with question phrases – what, who, how, where and the like – and it was found recently that these voice searches are geared towards local areas.

                This means that local vendors will need to start adding on to their online presence now more than ever! Your local, business and crowd-sourced sites needs to be regularly updated and active to ensure that your business can be found by these voice assistance. With these searches on the rise, it is important to ensure that your listings include the correct & updated phone numbers & addresses so that you are not left out in these long-tail queries searching for your services & products.

                While still not very common in suburban areas, multi-display digital signage and video walls are growing to become something more mainstream in bigger public places; Airports, restaurants, hotels and transportation centres – frequently high-traffic areas – are employing this method of digital advertising to market their ad slots to other businesses when they are not using it to further advertise their new services and products. Most of these video walls will include front and rear displays, and while these can feature LED, LCD or plasma displays, about 90% of the video wall market is filled by front projection walls and LCD displays. This could perhaps be due to the smaller bezels and lower prices for displays larger than 32”.

                Whereas digital signage typically takes up the size of a plasma TV, these video walls are much bigger and recently with touch integrated into these walls with infrared technology and capacitive touches, immersive experiences for users become the main goal of their ad projection. The ads need be interesting before this was in, and now it is also important that the ad truly engages with its audiences. User experience for video walls will be quite drastically different as compared to touch experiences on smaller devices such as by using a tablet. Video walls containing several smaller screens are different from and better than having a single big LCD display - due to the resolution required and how immersive the user experience can be on the video wall projection.

                When one thinks about Oculus Rift, it is common for their first thoughts to go towards Virtual Reality games. However, there is much more than just an immersive gaming experience for users now. Similar to video walls, these virtual reality simulators stress on immersive experiences. But this certainly opens a window of opportunity to brands to explore 360-degree views and experiences, or even entering the gaming concept to captivate their audiences. Traveling agencies in particular, can take 260-degree views and videos of areas they are advertising, and allow users to experience the fantastic view for themselves as part of their creative marketing strategy. Rather than just relying on descriptive texts like “featuring beautiful views of the sunset,” tourism hotspots can deliver the views straight to users without them having to even leave their seat.

                While most advertisers have not caught the wave on this entire virtual reality concept yet due to their pricing, it could be less pricey in the future. Currently, a 3-minute virtual reality video can cost more than $1 million just for production, but with technology’s rapid changes and new hardware & software frequently popping up, it is expected that as the hype dies down a little, the virtual reality concept will take digital marketing by the storm. Other industries can make use of this technology as well – imagine the experiences for a 3D interior designer!

                Microsoft’s HoloLens are relatively new when compared to Oculus Rift. While both products focus on virtual reality and its consumer engagement experience, Microsoft associated this product of theirs with a more technical, workspace-like and business-centered touch. The HoloLens centers around a custom holographic processing unit, making holographic computing possible. Just like other VR units, the HoloLens, when worn by a group of people, allow them to be ‘linked’ and viewed as hologram figures in another user’s view. So, what else can digital marketers utilize for their advertising & marketing strategies? In the healthcare & medicine sector for instance, a virtual-reality symptom checker could help doctors and patients understand each other more. In the gaming industry, of course, one can view and play an RPG game on a whole new level – quite personally.

If equipped with immersive touch experiences, viewers can experience how a product works in the virtual reality space, and these interactions within the VR experience can be reported back to the marketer in real-time. With plenty of these insights and increasing options to have detailed targeting aimed at users who have interacted with certain points of their campaign, virtual reality can be just a simple starting point with plenty of space to improve. Other businesses considering using virtual reality to market their products but are unsure where to start can make use of 3D advertising as a placeholder meanwhile.

Automation is getting stronger day by day, replacing needs for actual human workers and positions. Basic customer service-related questions can be answered with pre-set keyword-based questions and answers to ensure that customers get their replies instantly. Facebook is one of the first few platforms to utilize this function – pre-programed chatbots. Business owners can set up several question and answer sets that users can click on, and without even being there, these same owners can set an auto-response to indicate that the users’ messages have been received and will be replied soon. This is, of course, only if there are no pre-existing answers to answer the users’ queries.

Bigger brands like RedBull have started utilizing this feature on their Facebook page to connect with its users. By simply entering the chat, users will be greeted with multiple-choice questions such as “Are you interested to know more about the recent RedBull events?” or “Send me promotional details!” that they can simply click and get an answer for immediately. These answers can point to specific pages of their website, or just a simple answer if so desired. With enough time spent configuring the messages, businesses can potentially leave their chatbot unmonitored for a while, even while setting the chatbot to send visitors to the page of their latest promotion as a greeting or end-message. Imagine the possibilities this feature could entail!

                You might know this better as artificial intelligence, although technically, deep machine learning is a subset of AI. This is the basis of how chatbots can function. Basically, personalized digital experience is created from a big collection of data which frequently gets updated as their increase the algorithm networks to mimic human intelligence as closely as possible. While this is not entirely new, deep machine learning has just begun to slowly creep into the digital marketplace to help organizations with their marketing automation processes.

                How far can you automate with deep machine learning, you might wonder. Since machine-learning technology is advancing quickly, it enables a large amount of analytical data to be processed to gain some insights that actually leads to some critical information. This information could be used to improve your marketing campaigns by using detailed targeting towards the audiences that you might not have noticed before. Since they slowly build their algorithm network, you can be sure to gain insightful data that are more personalized and lead-driven, or whichever campaign objective that you are more interested in. Anyhow, data-driven storytelling using machine learning is sure to be more user-friendly to understand, and it has also started to derive upcoming trends and applications based on existing data. The more data you collect, the more insights you can get, so surveys’ importance could still be maintained despite all the changes in digital marketing recently.

                If you were not familiar with Waymo, this is a project started by Google in 2009 as a self-driving technology company. While this is still under way of further optimization and is only slowly rolling out in the United States, the concept of self-driving cars can bring a huge change in digital marketing. Imagine if you do not need to focus on the road while ‘driving’. Users who are already mobile-heavy would be able to utilize their phones even more, pretty much focusing their entire concentration on their screens. This would mean that billboards, road signs and small posters by the road will serve less and less function as self-driving cars become even more common anywhere around the world. Instead, the focus on mobile advertising could become more important than ever when this car eventually starts becoming more famous. Like the VR concept and augmented reality however, this product could be taking a much longer time before monetization based on these vehicles gets more attention and options, or even start to become effective at all.

                This also brings the possibilities of advertisements on third party apps such as Google Map, Waze or other navigation apps on their vehicle becoming increasingly important. In fact, just recently, sponsored advertisements have started to appear in Google Map, resulting in some locations become more prominent and noticeable than other locations. This further stress on the importance of keeping your business listing updated.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/10/12/five-technologies-that-could-change-digital-marketing-forever/2/#3f7669366893

https://www.5foldmarketing.com/voice-search-marketing-future/

https://marketingland.com/amazon-controls-70-percent-digital-assistant-device-market-214046

https://www.digitalsignagetoday.com/articles/video-walls-are-coming-catch-the-wave/

http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-oculus-rift-about-reshape-marketing-creativity-162124/

https://waymo.com/

https://www.hannonhill.com/resources/blog/2017/5-ways-ai-is-transforming-digital-marketing.html

http://www.digitalistmag.com/customer-experience/2017/05/09/incorporating-machine-learning-into-digital-marketing-plan-05073410