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Dell Hybrid Power Bank Review

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Work is no longer limited to the office, as there is a steady rise in the number of on-the-go professionals. Despite this, the availability of charging points remains a major challenge, which leads to an unexpected delay in work. Thanks to power banks, people now can easily stay connected to work while traveling.

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In line with the growing popularity of power banks, there’s an increase in the number of players offering innovative power banks. Dell, for example, has already made its mark in the market. Known for creating high-end laptops, Dell has also gained popularity for its innovative power banks. And a new addition to its kitty is its hybrid power bank – model no. PH45W17-CA.

Why is the Dell hybrid power bank a good choice for you?

The biggest strength of this hybrid charger is that it can simultaneously charge your laptop and phone. Therefore, two of your important devices can be charged on-the-go.

Thanks to its sleek design and lightweight, it’s extremely easy to carry. Also, you don’t need to carry separate chargers for your mobile and laptop, Dell’s power adapter is the answer to all your charging problems.

The hybrid charger comes with an adapter. Those who are still a little sceptical about using a power bank, the Dell power bank is a safe bet – since the durability of the device seems satisfactory, going upon the build quality that it has.

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Tech Specs

The capacity of the power bank is 12,800 mAh. In our experience, the power bank was able to give us a fully charged laptop in around 1.5 hours – which is good enough for you to keep working on the go, without worrying about the battery getting draining out.

What does not go in the favor of Dell hybrid power bank

With any power bank, you’d expect to keep all your devices charged at once. In this case though, the power bank supports only 1 USB-A port. This can be slightly inconvenient for a few but if your device usage is limited, you won’t really be bothered.

The aspect that makes this power adapter a little less popular in the market is its price range. Coming at an expensive price tag of $189.99 – it’s definitely not cheap. Moreover, it is compatible with Dell laptops only. There are power banks available in the market at a much lower price. But, you’d expect good quality from Dell.

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What is our take?

In our experience, the power bank poses no question in terms of quality. It’ll satisfy your daily needs of charging on-the-go. However, when we analyze the price at which it comes, it’s a premium product which does its job well.

So, if you’re looking to purchase a power bank from a very reputed brand, which delivers high on performance and will probably be more durable as opposed to some of its competitors – you should go for this Dell power bank. Otherwise, if you’re a little tight on the budget, there are better options available in the market.

Tips to Grow Instagram Followers Effectively

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Instagram has become tremendously popular as a fun application for children. Moreover, this platform is now also prominent as a brilliant content marketing, networking, selling, and audience building tool for both individuals as well as brands.

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Instagram is among the most prominent social networking websites around the globe, having more than 200 million active monthly users. And these users share 60 million images as well as 1.6 billion likes on a regular basis. It’s really spectacular, isn’t it?

So, if you have a big brand or just want to become a famous name in Instagram, then you should not strive for average. This post is dedicated to compiling some incredible tips by following which you can become an Instagram star. Being a digitally famous personality, you can easily expect to increase your brand awareness and business reach.

These attention-grabbing tips for your Instagram hashtags, captions, profiles, and so on would also help you to post on this platform so that you can acquire more and more followers, engagement, and visibility.

Proper Utilization of Hashtags:

What is your main target on Instagram?

Engaging your present base of audience, right? And I hope you also want to grow your audience base.

If both of the answers are ‘yes,’ then the first step should be posting new, engaging, and interesting photos.

Want to know the most important part?

Proper hashtagging to your photos is the most important requirement here because it makes your photos easily discoverable for your target audience.

Now, which hashtags should you go for?

The Instagram users make use of some particular hashtags over others. And if you can successfully use the proper set of hashtags in your photos, then you can easily reach out to new users and make yourself easily discovered.

So, your first work should be start searching for some appropriate set of hashtags in order to grab the attention of new interested followers, long-term customer engagement, and sales (the most important part).

Making Use of the Correct Filters on Instagram:

Keyword hashtags are a very important part of your growth in Instagram. But, you also need to take care of the correct filters on this platform.

Do you know the Instagram community responds to some particular photo filters more favorable in comparison with others?

If you use preferred filters, then you can expect a great positive impact on your customer engagement.

Along with the favorite filters of the general Instagram community, you should also discover the favorite filters of your audience as well.

What about Your Competitor’s Followers?

Do you want to find out and attract a new following to your Instagram Profile?

Then, just start discovering the Instagram accounts of your closest competitors. And just discovering won’t help you- just you need to engage with their audience base as well.

The fact is that these audiences have already shown their interests in the products that you offer, as they are following your competitors’ Instagram account.

So, how can you get your competitors’ audiences?

Just start engaging with them after finding out different ways of engagement. The more work you put from your side, the more followers plus returning customers you could extract.

Captions are Very Important:

You might know that a picture works more prominently than a bunch of words. But, don’t ignore the power of words when it comes to gaining Instagram followers.

Storytelling with Instagram photos is a genius idea to attract more and more followers. This technique can effectively generate engagement as well as sharing.

Creating good captions need some time but if you can work consistently, you will surely improve in your storytelling. Your work will be to find out the Instagram voice for your brand.

Proper Use of Geotags on Instagram to get Local Discoverability:

Apart from hashtags, it’s also possible to make your Instagram posts plus Stories discoverable just by tagging your location. It can be the venue or the city in which the particular photo or video was taken.

Along with the feed, locations also have their own Story on Instagram and so you should always add location sticker in your own Stories.

Local businesses can extract the most value out of the location tags just by daily posting to these feeds and by properly engaging with the posts from their prospective customers, who are physically present in the proximity.

Recognize the Power of the Consistent Instagram Posts:

Do remember that people won’t follow you for whatever you had posted earlier. The most important thing is the promise for whatever you’ll post in the upcoming days. Your audience base is interested to know what they will get if they tap the “Follow” button.

You need to post brilliant contents on a consistent basis to bind your follower’s attention to your profile for a long time. Even a simple structure can draw great attention as long as it holds a communicative nature to any follower first lands on that profile.

I hope you have got some great insights into some of the best ways of increasing your Instagram followers.

What are you waiting for?

Start implementing these tips today and hope for the best!

Key players in Scrum Team and their characteristics

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Developing a project in agile way is easy and tough. It is simple and complicated. Yes, it easy and simple when you understand the framework right. It is tough and complicated when you don’t. Therefore it is important to have a grip on the framework. But, if you want to do this, then your entire team must hold hands and work towards a common goal.

Let us now talk about scrum projects. The framework is simple but the whole team must put in efforts to execute the project in the correct manner. The ideal situation is required for every team to express their ability. To understand this in a better way, one has to undergo CSM Certification.

Traits of an Ideal Scrum Situation

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In an ideal scrum situation, the following are the characteristics possessed.

Self-organizing team

The team is empowered to think, share and execute their thoughts for the best results. They can get approval from the product owner (PO) and take up the backlogs to start working. In an ideal situation, this team will not try to boss around and will not have any hierarchy. Each individual will work with their efficiency keeping only the end goal in their mind.

Knowledge of multiple functions

Ideal team means that which has people working with their task but aware of the other processes as well. Say for instance, the developer knows about testing, integrating, and UI design. Similarly, each individual understands how the others work. This will help everyone to understand the pain points of the others in the team.

All under one roof

Scrum meeting, daily standup, sprint meeting etc will be effective when team meet across the table. This can happen only if everyone in the team operates from the same office.

Focus

The team should be assigned to work on any project in a dedicated fashion. In case if they are assigned other project or any other role in the same project, this will distract their focus and hence reduce their productivity.

Experienced players

The team that works well must be identified and should work together long-term on one or many agile projects. This will not only let them master the process but also they will understand each other strengths and plan accordingly.

But, do you think such an ideal situation can be achieved? Yes, possible. However, not always. Then what next? It is important to make every member in the scrum team to play a role to make the team an ideal one.

Ensure that your team has the following traits to get closer to the ideal team. The following section will describe the required characteristics from a product owner, scrum master, and the development team. These are the three key players who contribute to the success of a Scrum project.

Product Owner

This person is responsible for both development and maintenance of the product vision. The product backlog (PB) is prioritized with the help of the PO. They know the product requirement as explained by the client and will talk to the team to give them an insight. For better understanding one can attend CSPO Certification.

Top 5 Characteristics of an ideal PO

Great Orator

The PO will understand the product vision and will be in line with the stakeholders. But, it is important that this person is able to explain the goal to the team. This quality is equally important to make team understand the prioritization of the PBs.

Customer-oriented

They can talk to the team but must map the customer need. The primary motive of PO is to deliver the product as required by the client. They should never deviate not try to convince the customer. In fact, it is good if the PO plays the role of the customer during scrum meetings to emphasize the importance of the goal.

Aware of modelling techniques

Product success lies in choosing the right modelling technique. The PO must hold the responsibility of applying the right model to deliver the right product. Impact Mapping, Business model generation, and Lean startup are some of the models adopted by successful product owners.

Takes ownership to map the user story

Mapping user story should be mastered by the PO. It, in turn, will allow the team to look at the second dimension for every backlog.

Focuses on Backlog Refinement Activity

The time spent on backlog refinement will decide the quality of the product. Therefore the PO must know how to add details, estimate, and order items into the PB.

Scrum Master

Scrum master plays the facilitator role and makes sure that the team follows the scrum rules, practices, and the theory religiously.

Best Scrum Master must embrace the following roles based on the need

  1. Coach – Must coach the team towards continuous enhancement and collaborate everyone together as a scrum team.
  2. Teacher – Teach the Scrum methods to the entire team and ensure it is well understood.
  3. Mentor – Should be able to transfer knowledge about agile to anyone at the time of need to implement the Scrum process.
  4. Conflict Resolver – Willing to take action on the individual to resolve issues and make the team productive.
  5. Facilitator – Set the stage to begin and provide clear directions. Must understand that the agile principles are the key when compared to the practices.

Development Team

This team is the backbone of the scrum project. Each individual both in development and testing accepts the assigned task and work towards completing the same.

Must to have traits of the best development team are as follows

  1. Stronghold on technical concepts – The developer or tester must know the technical concepts thoroughly as the entire project team depends on their codes. It is important that they are not lethargic but have a thirst for constant learning.
  2. One who can respect the Boy Scout rule – This rule states that the individual should know how to clean up the messy code. Always the team must make sure to make improvement in the code given to them.
  3. Understands the true meaning of feedback – Should never take feedback as criticism. Also, must not criticize the person but should provide feedback to the idea. Therefore both way round this individual should accept even criticism as feedback and work towards it.

If you can inculcate these traits to your scrum team, then you are getting closer to the ideal team and be prepared to celebrate your success.

Generate Organic Profit With SEO Management

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the cornerstone of digital marketing and helps businesses reach the audiences they deserve.

There is a lot that goes into SEO, and constant management is required, which could be why your website is not seeing the kind of traffic and engagement you would expect.

seo management

Your website needs to have developed a solid foundation of engagement before it can generate any profit, which means being able to keep up with worldwide trending topics and current events to ride the waves.

Managing SEO independently can be difficult, especially if you lack the experience or time required to constantly keep up to date with everything on the internet. Luckily, there is a solution out there for businesses who want to improve online engagement.

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization (aka, SEO) is the term used for a set of practices that are designed to increase engagement – and therefore profits – to an online business.

SEO is a set of practices that help increase the ranking of your website on search engines. 

When customers want to find services that you offer, where do they go first nowadays? 

Google, and other search engines, are the most effective tools for clients to find services, products, and businesses that they need. Having a website is a great way to engage with these online customers, but it will only get you so far.

SEO is required to increase the ranking of your website in the search engine results. There will be thousands of results for the same keywords that you use to describe your business, and it can be hard for customers to locate you.

With regular SEO management, your website can rank higher on search engines and become a top result which will make it easier for clients to find you.

Be Seen Worldwide

There is a lot that goes into SEO, and it can be hard for small businesses to manage on their own.

This is why we would recommend going with a top SEO agency, which can cover all of your needs. 

Boise SEO is a thriving SEO agency, and a  growing community, that can take care of everything you need online to make sure your website will be seen worldwide by the clients you desire.

With increasing online engagement comes increased profits, which is why SEO is such a valuable business practice, yet it unfortunately often gets pushed behind.

We understand there is a lot to do when it comes to managing your business, both online and off, but SEO can make things so much easier by organically managing keywords, search terms, and the management of your website.

Pairing with an experienced SEO agency will give you access to the best secrets of the trade and help you organically increase traffic, engagement, and online profits for success.

Strategic Planning For The Future

A top SEO agency, like WebMarkets, can help you make plans for the future of your business and see them through.

With a team of experienced SEO professionals on your side, a strategy can be constructed for your website and the future of your business – and as these teams know what they are talking about, you just have to sit back and watch it happen.

This company offers transparent and effective SEO strategies for your website, and they serve companies all across the globe thanks to access from the internet.

If you feel as though your website has reached a plateau in terms of engagement or you are not making back the profits you thought you would by now, SEO can be the solution.

At WebMarkets, the team will evaluate your current online circumstances and offer clear recommendations for how it can be improved. SEO agencies like this provide the research, strategy outline and an overall cost for their services helping you get things done in one neat package.

Join The Community Today

If you want to take your website to the next level and increase organic engagement, then join the thriving community at WebMarkets SEO today.

Together you can work together to transform your online work and ensure that it gets the attention it deserves.

Their strategies are well-researched to ensure success for every website. 

The Best Ways to Use Technology In Your Small Business

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We live in a digital and technological world, and there is so much at our fingertips. And as a small business owner, there are many ways that you can be using technology to make sure that your business runs in smarter and more effective ways. There will be tech that will help to make your business run more efficiently, as well as tech that can help to make process more versatile or flexible, which can be a natural progression for a lot of the processes that you might already have in place in your business. If your business doesn’t currently use tech too much, then it does take time and money to get it all in place. But there are many benefits to your business, so that any short-lived challenges can be quickly overcome by the transitional process.

Many of the technologies we now take for granted was most sought after just a decade ago. Who would have thought you could find actual online casinos on sites like legalonlinecasino.org, that are licensed and legal?

With that in mind, here are some of the areas of your small business where technology can help, and just how the tech can help to make a difference. Are there any areas that you think you’d like to look into? It would be great to hear what you think.

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Productivity

Being able to see who is doing what and when they are doing it, is really important for your business. You can see where help is needed, where retraining is needed, and what is holding things up. If there are problem areas, then being able to deal with it sooner rather than later, can make a big difference. With that in mind, here are some of the tools and tech that can help the productivity of your business.

  • Time tracking software can be a great tool to see who is doing what, and how long they are spending on it. If a task that you know takes no longer than an hour, is taking the same employee over two hours each time, then you can see what is going wrong.
  • Being able to use things like project management tools and task management tools to help you to stay on top of your daily business jobs and responsibilities can be an easy win.
  • Email management can b time consuming, but there are stellar email management systems out there that can make a difference and help you to stay on top of messages, replies, and new messages.

Money

Money and cash flow can be a big problem for a small business, especially when there is a lack of it. So using technology to help to track cash flow and things like invoices, can be a really good idea. Think about something like blockchain technology, for example. You might be wondering to yourself, what is blockchain technology? In simple terms, a blockchain, is a growing list of records that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a hash of the previous block, with things like a timestamp, and some transaction data.

The reason why this technology can be good for business is that, simply by design, it is resistant to modification of the data, making it pretty secure for things like banking and money. Another perk is the possibility to initiate transactions all day and at any time, and in the fastest way. Besides, the security of it, guaranteed by the innovation, can also contribute to the safety of operations.

Other technology to help with money for your small business could include:

  • An online invoice service can help to track who has been invoiced, what they have been invoiced, and then can easily mark when payments have been made. It keeps everything all in one place and reduces the need for paperwork.
  • There are lots of apps for invoices and for tax purposes, making doing tax returns much simpler, as well as working out expenses.
  • If you have an accountant that handles business transactions and things like tax for you, then you can easily send them files online with technology, to help to streamline their work.

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Marketing

In the day and age that we live in marketing as really changed from what it looked like only a number of years ago. Online marketing is a much bigger thing than it ever has been, but there are plenty of technological tools to help you along the way.

  • There is software that allows you to create and upload a marketing plan, making it easier for all employees to see it, rather than having to wait for a meeting (as it is rare to get everyone all in one place these days).
  • We have the benefit of social media to help us with a lot of marketing, so using those sites and apps, and their unique tools like live video and so on, can be a really great feature.
  • Blogging is a really great part of online marketing as it can help to spread the word about your business, as well as help to get you to rank higher up on search engines.

Collaboration

When you work well as a team, it really help the business to grow. But because of the way that a lot of us now work, with things like flexible working and remote working, we need to make sure that we are using technology to our benefit, so that the collaboration and learning around the business can keep working and keep working well.

  • It can be hard to get everyone in the office at the same time, and you may even have team members or contractors that live elsewhere. So make the most of teleconferencing so that you can all stay in touch and keep up to date, wherever you all are.
  • The cloud is a great tool to be using, as it can be used for sharing files and data, as well as used for data storage. All businesses need to be making the most of it.
  • When your team are online, it can be really handy to just have them to message each other quickly can easily through an online messaging system. A simple thing that can make everyday in the office easier, and help to boost productivity.

Using Gamification to Introduce a Problem-Solving Culture

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Attract, retain and motivate talent – these are the core goals of most HR departments. They all trickle down to one word, engagement. Since most HR leaders realize that 70% of their business transformations will fail if they ignore the engagement of their employees, according to Forbes, most will work overtime to create a culture that supports employee engagement.

Gamification

Sadly, engagement takes a heavy blow when trying to introduce lean programs to employees, even though such initiatives are aimed at improving company efficiency. As such, the standard engagement practices might fall short in these situations. Luckily, gamification can introduce a whole new dynamic to the problem-solving mindset of your employees as well as keep them locked into their jobs.

Here is why and how gamification can play this pivotal role in your workforce’s problem-solving culture:

Gamification Is a Matter of Psychology

It is human nature to crave motivation and instant gratification from common achievements. Your employees will mainly embrace walking the lean management and problem-solving path you craft as long as they offer intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. It is always a good idea to invest in problem-solving tools like the kanban system, since they play a critical role.

With lean problem-solving techniques constantly requiring employees to change their mindset and behavior, three aspects must converge; motivation, ability, and trigger. Gamification offers all three items which can help to instill this culture in your employees. Furthermore, it introduces the aspect of fun and subtle competitiveness into your workplace which can introduce a whole new dynamic into your engagement goals.

Benefits of Gamification

Employees are in constant need of feedback for the tasks that they do every day, but the manager cannot always be present to offer feedback for every task. Gamification fits right into these shoes as it offers metrics to assess the success of an employee. It also showcases that the company cares about what the employees are engaged in.

On the other hand, it can also promote workplace efficiency as employees work to provide better services to the next customer that walks in through the door. The fact that it might promote friendly competition between two teams in separate locations makes it even more efficient as a tool for improving employee engagement.

Gamification and Promoting Lean Thinking

Lean thinking is aimed at refining the intricate detail of a product or service to reduce waste and increase productivity as well as profitability. To do so, you will require employees to be on their toes in decision making, especially when comparing two somewhat similar lean decisions. Gamification offers a fun approach to this situation.

It ensures that the employee has the company culture and goals at the back of their mind when approaching any problem in the workplace. It also provides a natural reward for employees who shift their behavior flawlessly due to the sudden change in how the organization is being run. All this can turn into center stage role players when looking to introduce a lean problem-solving culture in your organization.

It Boils Down To the Infrastructure

Gamification will only work for your organization as long as you have the right infrastructure in place. It is common for companies to approach it only because it is a current trend, but most incorporate unnecessary aspects into their gamification efforts that often take the effectiveness out of it. Essentially, gamification should touch on:

  • Game mechanics
  • Digital engagement
  • Player motivation
  • Experience design

When designing your gamification requirements, these aspects should all be at the back of your mind. You should constantly look to refine the design to incorporate better items and eliminate anything that might not necessarily champion the bigger picture of your company’s goals.

Conclusion

Fun and work have always been treated as rivals, but gamification offers a ground on which they can co-exist. The trick is to ensure that neither sides are over-favored to make the most out of what gamification has to offer. Invest in the right infrastructure to improve your employee engagement levels through gamification.

Meet the Startups From the first batch of Yesbank Datathon

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Technology is recent times has become a great enabler in terms of how it allows businesses to grow in different aspects – and not just in terms of short term goals but long term as well. Traditional practices and means are quickly changing, thanks to technological advancements in fields like Artificial Intelligence, which has definitely allowed businesses to better equip themselves to their customer’s needs.

Strictly speaking in terms of the banking sector, we’ve seen how traditional means of banking – which primarily worked on paper has now become partially or completely paperless. Automation in the banking sector has not only reduced the working time of things but also allowed for a more satisfying experience to the consumer. The process is both fast and efficient, which prior to the merging of technology with banking, wasn’t possible.

The YesBank datathon is one such step towards bridging the gap between technology and banking sector. The judicious use of technology in this sector will only help grow the industry and make it more user-friendly in the coming years.

The Datathon happened on the 23rd of December, with participation from over 6,000+ data scientists and engineers, some of whom were from other countries. The intention behind this Datathon was to bring in 20 key solutions to YesBank’s working as a bank and implement the same within a specified time frame of say another 1-2 months.

The magnitude of the event was massive, which speaks for the potential of such events in the future in India. Technology is truly emerging as a pioneer of changing the ways of traditional workings, across all the major sectors of businesses. YesBank, being the 4th largest bank in India, understands how real life situations can be better handled via the usage of technology – and hence this Datathon.

There was immense anticipation amongst the participants for the event as well. More than 6,000 people which made for around 1,600+ teams became a part of this event. The team’s were given real life challenges, that were part of YesBank’s day to day operations. This ranged from the data’s (AI and ML), alongisde big data analytics.

Among the 1600+ teams, the best 200 teams were shortlisted for the final round. These teams were given 60 days to create a working prototype with reference to YesBank’s day to day working operations, the same would be implemented by the bank in coming months.

Top 5 Teams : –

Out of the 200 shortlisted, there were numerous terrific ideas that came to the floor. To highlight a few key ones, are as follows :-

Oracle (+2 students from IIM Bangalore) –

A master product which creates a 360 degree view of every retail customer and provides both product and service recommendation to the customers, as per their need.

TCS (Chennai) –

They had 2 products. The first product enables the customer to be equipped with advice on best investments to his savings, with transactions patterns as a base. The 2nd product was aimed at helping Merchant Relationships – both with online and offline retailers.

 Vodafone Idea Limited –

AI based application for retail managers to help them in acquiring knowledge on measure of share wallet of the bank to every retail customer.

Students from VIT, Vellore –

An ML algorithm based relationship manager tool which will enable the bank to find usage on streaming sites. It will create relationship tree, based on every customer transaction.

University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka –

They developed a model wherein using Shap Value, the bank would be able to create a customer – product and service propensity report.

The top 200 teams in the competition included not only students but also working professional, as the ideas above highlight. Top technology universities in India like IIT, ISI Kolkata and over 150+ professionals from companies like CISCO, Infosys, TCS, Accenture,Walmart Labs, Amazon development center IBM, Siemens were part of the datathon.

In the final round, 90% of the finalists were professionals, working in the field of data sciences. As this suggests, these are professionals not from the finance background and yet, their interest in financial technological upgrades highlights the bright future of the banking industry.