Erik Qualman's Blog, page 520

Legos for Grownups

Legos for Grownups 

Acer recently announced a childhood dream come true. Stackable computer technology. Picture Legos but for grownups. What exactly is this wondrous technology? Exactly what it sounds like, kind of. Acer’s new Revo Build Series is a “modular” PC that regular folk can use to build their own computer by stacking premade components. Users can tailor the machine to their liking, as if your building your own autobot. This allows for continuable improvement called “modularity” which is a growing trend that will allow users an easy way to upgrade their technology.
Da Skimm
So a small transaction occurred in 2014 when Google sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. But the catch? Project Era remained under the reigns of Google. The plan calls for modular smartphones. Allowing for phone-lovers everywhere to choose their own components, and upgrade whenever new accessories are available. Users would buy the Project Era device and build away just like Legos.
Pop Quiz 
Since it seems modularity isn’t going away in the near future the pure definition might make you seem extra smart. What does it mean exactly? Modularity is the degree to which a system’s components are made up of relatively independent components or parts which can be combined. Huh? In the long term it can make fixing tech bugs a whole lot easier.

Oops I did it again..

We are all familiar with halftime shows not always going as planned and I don’t think I have to say any names. On Monday Kansas State officials took to Twitter to publicly apologize for their band formation. The formation was supposed to depict rival Kansas Jayhawks’s battling the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek. Instead, the Starship resembled male genitalia and the Jayhawk looking as though it was performing fellatio. Yikes.

 

Folks this can all be avoided by reading a certain book titled What Happens on Campus Stays on Youtube.

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Get Social About Your Home and Trade Show Appearances

If you’re company attends home and trade shows on a regular basis, there are ways to get the most out of each appearance.

By promoting your trade show attendance on social media and other marketing formats, you can spread the word about your company’s home and trade show activities.

Here are a few ways to do just that:

Take Advantage of Social Media for the Pre-Show

Home and patio shows as well as trade shows usually only take place over a long weekend. This adds a certain level of immediacy to your marketing endeavors during the event.

Fortunately, with a little help from social media, you can market your appearance before the show even begins.

By spreading the word about your trade show appearance on sites like Facebook and Twitter, you’ll create a following well ahead of the actual event. You can post everything from the trade show dates to pictures from past appearances to any deals you may have during the tradeshow through your social channels.

Create a Social Conversation

Once the show begins, you can also use social media to create a buzz about your company’s trade show booth.

For starters, you can encourage visitors to follow your company via social media. At the end of each day, you can connect with your new followers and thank them for stopping by your booth.

Likewise, you can also create a hashtag for your trade show appearance and encourage visitors to re-tweet your hashtag. This will create a conversation around your company’s trade show appearance and help generate more traffic during the event.

Offer Mobile Surveys

As the following article looks at, most companies use home and trade shows to bring in customers, but they never really get opinions on what those customers thought about their brand. You can avoid making this mistake by taking advantage of mobile surveys.

Creating a subscription list and sending mobile surveys to event visitors will give your company the opportunity to truly discover what’s on everyone’s mind.

Whether you ask simple questions like what visitors thought about your products or you get more in depth, sending surveys in the moment will help you improve your trade show practices.

Use Short Codes

Along with social media marketing and surveying, you can also feature an SMS short code at your trade show booth.

Short codes make it easy for visitors and attendees passing by your booth to opt-in to your company’s marketing campaigns. If possible, you can also feature your short codes in other areas throughout the venue.

Hold a Social Contest

Just about everyone likes a prize, especially when they’re able to walk away with their prize the day they win. You can encourage visitors to follow your company on social media by holding a social contest at your next trade show, though make it worth their time and effort.

For example, you can give away prizes to a handful of visitors who friend your company during the tradeshow by drawing their names from your friendship request list.

Likewise, you can hand out freebies to the first few visitors who share a picture of your booth on their Instagram or Facebook account.

When you’re ready to increase your company’s presence at home and trade shows, take advantage of the social and mobile pointers above.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Fight Club Live On Snapchat

THE STORY FIGHT CLUB LIVE ON SNAPCHAT

Earlier this week, two former day care workers from LightBridge Academy in New Jersey were accused of starting a “fight club” among 4-6 year olds. They were encouraging the children to physically fight one another (Source: People).

Awful right?!

Well it gets worse, the 22 and 28 year old women were recording at least a dozen children fighting and posting it to Snapchat (Source: The Washington Post). Because obviously it if doesn’t go on social media, did it actually happen? Snapchat usually allows videos to disappear once they are viewed but in a case like this, the Snapchats were recorded and showed to authorities (Source: The Washington Post).

DA SKIM

Maybe someone should have told these women to read this book and learn that what happens on Snapchat actually stays all over the Internet. The two women have since been fired from the day care and are facing child abuse charges.

Quote of the Day: “Blackberry is still a thing?”

Blackberry wants to become a thing again and get back on track with business-related services. Today they announced that they would be buying Good Technology for $425 million in cash. That’s a lot of cash. Good Technology and Blackberry have been competitors over the years when it comes to secure mobile communications. Looks like they are putting their competitive sides away to help one another take over business centric services on smartphones (Source: CNET). Blackberry CEO John Chen said that, “By acquiring Good, BlackBerry will better solve one of the biggest struggles for CIOs today, especially those in regulated industries: securely managing devices across any platform” (Source: CNET).The deal is expected to be completed in November so Blackberry has some time to plan their takeover.

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5 Secrets for Using Facebook Like a Pro

I joined Facebook over 11 years ago and have watched the site evolve from a place for college students to find out who’s in their classes to now being one of the most powerful marketing tools for both small businesses and large brands. As someone who uses Facebook both for personal reasons and business purposes, I have learned a lot of tips and tricks along the way to make Facebook more valuable. Facebook has many hidden features that aren’t general knowledge so I created a list of 5 tips to help you use Facebook like a pro. I based these tips on things that have helped me but also common misunderstandings I notice from other users.

Facebook Pro Tip #1- Make the most of asking for recommendations from your network: I see a lot of people turning to Facebook to ask their friends for recommendations. They often want their friends to tag people they recommend in the comments. Whether you’re seeking a roommate, want to hire a graphic designer, a musician or need to borrow something etc., the power of Facebook gives you referrals with social proof!

However, almost 100% of posts I see asking for recommendations are only view-able to your direct friends. This means when someone comments and tags a friend who you aren’t already friends with, that person can’t see or comment. Easy fix! Change the setting on that post so it’s view-able to “Friends of Friends”. On the bottom right next to “Post” (before you post) or on the top left you will see a mini triangle (if you have already made the post) scroll down to “More Options”, then “Custom” and click your mouse over “Share With These People or Lists” and the “Friends of Friends” option will come up. It only shows up if you click your mouse in the box. It’s hidden but it’s there!

Facebook Pro Tip #2- Be mindful of what you “Like”:  Many of you including myself remain neutral with your opinions on controversial topics. I don’t post about politics, religion or anything that may cause an uproar. If your intention is to remain neutral, then you need to be mindful of the updates you “Like” on your friends’ news feeds. When you “Like” an update that’s public, it becomes a part of your digital footprint and you run the chance of that update showing up on your news feed to friends. Therefore, if you like a post that’s anti this, pro that or supporting/ not supporting a sensitive topic but don’t want to be public about it on Facebook, well your “Like” is essentially being public about it. If you don’t care, then “Like” away! If you do care, please be mindful before giving an update the good ol’ Facebook stamp of approval with a “Like”.

Facebook Pro Tip #3- Learn what your privacy settings really look like:  Most of us are concerned about privacy. Perhaps you have coworkers sending you friend requests and you want to accept them but you don’t want them to see your college party photos. You probably already know how to change privacy settings on individual photo albums and posts. However, there’s still that concern of, “are my photos really hidden from certain people?” To find out exactly how someone else sees your profile, click on the 3 dots right on your cover photo, next to the “View Activity Log” button. From there, click on “View As…” then you can type in each friend’s name to learn exactly what they see when they click on your page.

Facebook Pro Tip #4- Manage your page notifications wisely: Some of you don’t comment on Facebook posts for fear of getting too many notifications whenever someone else comments after you. If you don’t want to get notifications but still want to add your two cents to the topic, there’s an easy fix. After you post, on the top right of that particular post you’ll see an arrow pointing down (looks like a chevron pattern). Click on that arrow and scroll to “Turn off notifications”.

Facebook Pro Tip #5- Get updates from pages you “Like”:  Do you “Like” a business page because you want to get their updates? Many of you probably wonder why you never see posts on your news feed from a page you “Like”. Due to the mysterious Facebook algorithm you will miss many important updates from pages you “Like”.  No fear, there’s a trick! If you want to get the latest updates from a specific page you “Like”, click on the “Liked” button after you “Like” a page. Then scroll to “Get Notifications”. Once this is checked off, you’ll get a notification each time the page makes an update just like you would get a notification from a friend who comments on one of your posts. Please note that as I’m writing this, Facebook is currently also in the process of rolling out layout changes to business pages. This screen shot and tip may change depending on when you are reading this.

 Facebook is constantly changing their privacy settings, layout and features. What works today may not be relevant tomorrow. Be flexible and be open to changes with Facebook and any other social network. These tips are also meant for desktop usage. Some features aren’t available on the mobile app.

There you have it! Now you can use Facebook like a pro! Do you have your own Facebook pro tips to share? Leave us a comment, and your tip may be featured in a future post.

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Become More Social in Finding the Best Home for Your Loved Ones

If your parents are in need of senior care, then social media is a great research tool for finding the right care center.

Whether you need to find care for your mother, father, or both, reaching out to the social masses will provide you with plenty of helpful insights.

With social searches in mind, here are just a few ways social media can help you find the best care for your parents:

Reach Out to Friends and Family

Deciding to admit your parents to an elder care center can be a difficult process.

However, there’s a good chance some of your social friends, family, and followers have been through the same process.

By reaching out to your social friends on sites like Facebook, you can get first hand advice on how to go about admitting your parents to elder care.

Whether you want to get advice on the best care facilities in your area or gather opinions on how to prepare your parents for the lifestyle change, social media is a great place to start.

In addition, reaching out to your close friends and loved ones on social media can be an effective way to find emotional support during the process. You can send private messages or chat privately with close friends on Facebook for example.

Read Elder Care Blogs

There are a number of professionals and people just like you who are familiar with the elder care process. By seeking out their blogs, you can read up on just about everything you need to know about admitting your parents to an elder care center.

The article “Thought Leader Series: Quick Guide to Elder Abuse Lawsuits” mentions some of the red flags you should watch out for with care centers.

Elder care blogs provide unbiased information on elder care abuse as well as other factors you might not consider when choosing a facility for your parents.

Research Review Websites

One of the great things about social media is the fact that it provides anyone the opportunity to speak openly about their experiences in the form of reviews.

Review sites like Yelp make it easy to find first-hand customer accounts of just about any business – including elder care establishments.

By briefly researching review sites, you can find hundreds of reviews and ratings for elder care facilities across the country.

If a review facility isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, there’s a good chance you’ll read about it on a review site.

Follow Care Center Business Pages

A growing number of elder care centers are increasing their outreach efforts by starting Facebook business pages.

By finding and following the business pages of the top elder care facilities on your list, you can get a good idea of how communicative each establishment is.

For example, you can read through customer posts to see how responsive the care facility is to questions and concerns.

Likewise, you can send a message or post a comment to the care center’s social business page and see what kind of response you get in return.

Before you admit your parent or parents to an elder care facility do a little social research first.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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Dig-in to Social Media for the Best Food Options

Part of the fun of traveling, whether for business or pleasure, is finding somewhere new to eat.

Maybe you want the local tastes of the town or a high end restaurant to relax in, or just something quick, inexpensive and satisfying.

One of the best ways to find just what you’re looking for is to hop on your social media.

Where to start:

• Start by asking your social media friends if they know of anywhere in the town you’re visiting – You never know who may have a cousin there or maybe used to live there. Maybe a Facebook friend travels there frequently and is a food connoisseur willing to share their greatest finds. So just put a quick blurb out asking for any suggestions.

• Check out some local interviews or food reviews of the city where you’re going – You can look to blogs and articles such as Expert Interview with the eatPGH team on Where to Eat in Pittsburgh or local papers or reviews online.

• Food bloggers offer excellent information – Remember, these don’t have to be professionals, but maybe a mom who loves to dine out and blog about it or an accountant whose hobby is food. Spend a little time finding and reading these.

• Tweet it – Twitter is great for finding specific information, and whether you search by a hashtag, like #pittsburghrestaurants or ask it yourself, such as Where should I eat in Pittsburgh? #pittsburghfood #diningoutinpittsburgh, you should get some good responses.

Then what?

• Once you’ve got a few choices, take a look at the specific restaurant websites – Maybe your friend’s cousin loves the place, but you’re not a fan of that cuisine or style. So take a look at the menu and website for a glimpse into the atmosphere.

• Read reviews – You probably want to search more than reading the website reviews, so take a look at local reviews on sites like Zagat, Yelp and Tripadvisor. You’ll get the lowdown from the pickiest diners to those with elite taste buds to the average Joe. Remember, when you read these, take them with a grain of salt; one bad review doesn’t make for a bad restaurant.

• Speaking of other sites, use the specific restaurant sites to find a place to eat if you haven’t found one already – The above mentioned, like Tripadvisor and Zagat are great social sites to find a place to eat. You can narrow it down to location or type of food, price range and atmosphere.

• Book it – Rather than go and wait for a table or have the restaurant be full, book an online reservation using a site like Opentable.

Social media is one of those great modern tools travelers love. You’ve got it all at your fingertips.

Friends or virtual strangers can recommend a restaurant you never would have found otherwise.

Bon appetite!

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com

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Five Social Media Tips to Optimize Content Marketing

Do you own a business?

Do you have any content?

Do you have followers on Social Networks?

If you answered yes to these questions, then you must contribute and share your content on social networks. Social Media has extensively replaced traditional paid advertising and has become an effective tool to grab the business audience in order to boost business. Very few businesses do not have a presence on social networks: but the vast majority of them are active on all social networks.

 

Social media has become a platform that allows buyers and consumers to connect. It grab the audience’s attention and puts the name of your brand out there, with the potential for your content to become viral.

 

In 2015, I’ve made a list of five social media tips that can change the future of your content marketing campaigns on social networks.

 

#1 Reach the Targeted Audience

Yes, billions of people are on social networks, but you don’t need to target them all. You must focus on the people that could become your future buyers. You need to provide test content to a test audience, and then measure the results of this campaign with precision. Afterward, using the social tools that are widely available on the market, make a list of these people. You need to focus on a theme and on a shortlisted audience. In order to do so, you must run a valuable A/B testing campaign.

 

#2 LinkedIn is a Social Gold Mine

LinkedIn is not only a popular social network,  it’s also a hub for the business activity where all professional brands and businesses interact. Develop good LinkedIn posting habits that will allow you to reach the right people on this social network. You must establish professional relations with other LinkedIn members that share you’re  same professional interests. You need to analyze the results effectively, and contribute by posting optimized and well-researched content on LinkedIn, which has the potential to catch the attention of a large audience.

 

#3 Gather Feedback and Insights

I must say that this one is the most important tip. It must be followed in order to develop a vast presence on social networks. When you contribute to social networks with your content, you typically don’t know what will be the next step to take. In content marketing, there are many strategies involved. Gathering valuable feedback and improvising the content based on this feedback is very important. You must receive feedback in order to measure the popularity of your content; based on the comments, you will need to improve your content accordingly. It will provide you great ideas for your future social media content marketing campaign strategy.

 

#4 Content is Always King

Yes, you read that right: content is always king. Thus, the real game changer here is the quality of the content and content marketing campaign. You must publish effective, fresh, and unique content in the best possible manner. Your content is the #1 factor to take into consideration when you are establishing your presence on social networks. You must use interactive visual links and beautifully designed pictures along with your content. You should consult popular bloggers or find programs that will allow you to effectively market your content on social media. You should carefully select a time to post your content: you should always try to reach the optimum number of people targeted by your content. You should propose a solution to people’s problems, and post social updates on a daily basis. If you achieved to articulate the best content posting strategy you will see a change in your presence on social media, as people start to share your content. Develop effective blogger outreach program, find bloggers with maximum followers and make them write about your product and share it with their followers. According to Social Media Examiner, you must invest in creating good content for social networks

 

#5 Prioritization of Social Networks Matters a Lot

There are an enormous number of social networks, ranging from one to hundreds, but prioritizing them for getting the best results is important for you. You should tweet rather than post if your Twitter followers outnumber your friends on Facebook. If you have established your presence on LinkedIn with your publications, LinkedIn should be prioritized over all other social networks. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you should ignore the other social networks. When you prioritize your content and your social networks, you should always refer to your past results of content marketing campaigns, and especially to the feedback you have received from your audience. Hootsuite can be an effective online tool to help choose the right social media networks for successful business branding and campaign strategy.

 

 

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How Easy is it to Start an Online Store?

If you want to make money on the internet, there are numerous ways to do it. Many of them actually do not involve selling physical products, but instead doing some kind of marketing or advertising for others. However, if you would like to start an online business that actually does have things to sell, then this can also be a very good way to make money – if you do it right.

Photo by Naypong at freedigitalphotos.net

Why is an Online Shop a Good Business to Try

Online stores can do very well because they have fewer of the running costs of physical stores (for example they don’t need as many staff or anywhere to display their goods), and they can sell to people anywhere they like, rather than being limited to people who can visit their location to shop. Online stores can also sell digital products like downloadable software and eBooks, which can make for an even easier business to manage as you can’t run out of stock, and you don’t have to worry about physical storage for the items you are trying to sell!

It is fairly easy to get started, so here we take a look at some considerations if you are serious about creating an online store.

Try PrestaShop as a Store Management System

In order to keep your product catalog up to date and support any e-commerce transactions, you will need to use a good store management system that plugs in to your website. One of the most trusted platforms for this kind of thing is the open source solution PrestaShop. PrestaShop has quite a lot of new features, including a module that allows you to manage EU compliance and convert tax and sales in different currencies. PrestaShop also updates the back office to make it easier to navigate and manage, and improves the performance of database queries, making the system run faster both for you on the admin side and for customers.

What Are You Up Against When You Start Up?

The main consideration when you start a new online shop is not setting up the website itself – that can actually be done quite easily with the right platforms and services. Instead, you need to worry about promoting your online shop so that the right people know about it or find it in web searches when they want to buy something you sell. This means that as well as having strategies for products and keeping your store stocked with things that will sell well, you also need to work on a social media and SEO marketing strategy. It is usually best, if you have no expertise in this area, to talk to a professional consultancy.

With the right platform to manage your store and a good approach to marketing it, you should find (assuming you have good products and provide a good service!) that customers will be really happy to browse your store and order from you!

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Surprise From Google

THE STORY SURPRISE FROM GOOGLE

Google surprised searchers on Wednesday, September 1st with a shiny brand new logo. After using the same serif typeface for the past 16 years it seems that Google was a little bored with it and switched to a “Product Sans” font for a cleaner, simpler look (Source: Business Standard) real simple like daycare crayon simple.

But the change!

As with any change from a popular company, sometimes more than others *cough Facebook*, people like to share their opinions. Google got some mixed reviews on the new look. Ultimately the change of look doesn’t matter because in 3 days people will forget what it used to look like (Source: TechCrunch).

DA SKIM

In a blog post Google said, “As you’ll see, we’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).”  They also included this video showcasing how Google has evolved over the years. Looks like Google has their own new back to school look.

 

Quote of the Day: “Get that in a dash!”

Amazon released their Dash buttons back in March. These buttons allow users to instantly order products with the click of a button in order to never run out and to keep Amazon a go to purchaser for consumers. The buttons were invitation only until today, leading to good news for all Prime users! Now any Amazon Prime member can pay $4.99 to have access to purchase water, toilet paper, gum, trash bags and other household essentials at the tip of their fingertips…literally (Source: USA TODAY).

 

Term of the Day: “Saved by the Bell”

Remember that smug kid Zach on Saved by the Bell? Ever wonder where the show’s name, or that term came from? Here you go … England is small so they needed to reuse coffins and the gravesite. When they dug up the coffins they found that 1 out of 25 had scratch marks on the inside. They realized they were burying people alive!

So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus someone could be,”Saved by the Bell ”or was considered a ”Dead Ringer.” Now all this Zombie talk makes a little more sense.

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Juxtapose Data and Produce Extremely Viral Content

When I first started my freelancing career online my focus was simple – write about the subject or product. This I did but along the way I learned about style, tone and number of words involved and I incorporated them whenever the occasion arose. But it wasn’t until I came face to face with content marketing that my antennae really started buzzing and focusing.

At the time (2013-2014) the subject was new and along with Google’s textual changes introduced earlier, which more or less revolutionized the standard and quality of written content, I became immersed in the milieu of content change and upgrading. An almost similar scenario to being part of a software development services set up where change and up-grading commonly take place.

The striking thing about the changes was the repeated call for top quality content to make it with the search engines along with other SEO tricks and techniques and that was when I realized the content I was writing was boring. No, not only boring but also downright dead! I had to upgrade my style of writing.

This later changed to not just top quality content but for extraordinary top quality content that saw me look down the barrel of content marketing, now the pick of the cream of writing, if you want to excel yourself at writing online. If you succeeded with writing up content marketing text you’ve made it but if not, you might as well go up in a puff of smoke as far as the clients are concerned.

Thankfully I survived the sudden onrush of changes but I now also know that apart from content marketing to make your writing marketable, there is also room to learn about how to use data in different ways and turn it into a dynamic marketable tool with interaction as the focus. Doubtful of your can do abilities? Well there’s nothing a software development services company can’t handle.

Data always abounds wherever you are whether at home or at work and with the PC at your disposal, data prevalence is a ubiquitous reality and the beauty of it is you can gain access to all types of data on the market and on competitors both locally and overseas.

And data gathering and usage needn’t be boring but can be turned into something exciting and useful to customers. How? Well, data is always interesting especially if you’ve accessed it for the first time and it proves interesting. To make it more so expertise and creativity can be put to work.

Data, for instance, can be juxtaposed to reveal very interesting comparative details about salaries locally and at some other location for the same or different jobs. These can be presented in such an engaging way so as to make viewers want to stay focused and realize their specific goals.

Data presentation even if produced by a also needn’t be dry and boring. They can be presented with zest in an easy to understand manner that customers will find attractive and enticing. Data can be turned into something fun to listen to, digest and act upon instead of being just a list of static and boring figures.

Data treated and presented in this fashion will go a long way in furnishing customers with exactly the kind of information they need in making an informed decision and achieve positive results. They will definitely want to learn as much as they can (the presentation is superb) and benefit from the data.

The presentation of data with the use of infographics is yet another captivating technique that can also capture the attention of your customers. They can trace historical trends in demand and sales that would otherwise prove boring if only figures were presented without an historical account.

Data presented in consort with storytelling can boost the quality of your content marketing threefold simply by portraying and explaining a brand in a human context and tying the brand to customers. This process makes a particular brand totally relevant to the world at large.

If the above two techniques in the use of data are not to your liking, there is always the potential for using a gaming approach in the use of available data. There are numerous versions of the type of games that can be thought up and popularized online with the aid of the social media platforms.

Using geographical data can be fun and educational at the same time with the use of an interactive map to help put some reality and interest into the equation. Improvise by trying to figure out where to spend a quiet weekend on a realistic budget and get away from it all and enjoy a carefree break.

The real potency of data lies in what customers want and expect from the data presented to them and if you are faced with problems, any software development services company can supply you with just the right app you need to have your data gyrating and doing all sorts of data configuring.

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