Hashtags are a single word or group of words after the symbol ‘#’, known as a hash. Introduced in Internet Relay Chats for messaging and live chats, hashtags were initially used for tweet chats on Twitter for open group discussions around a specific topic. Its popularity started from Twitter where people used it for tweet chats. Here are some useful tips for using common hashtags:

• Checking the common hashtags used by followers, competitors, and product partners

• Engaging with users using common hashtags that are related through retweets, likes, and comments

• Refraining from spamming your post with tons of common hashtags which may not impart trust in your consumer

Different types of hashtags are used for various purposes, e.g., brand and campaign specific, content-specific, and trending hashtags. Let us dive into each of them in detail and talk about its use.

Brand and Campaign Hashtags

Brand hashtags are made specifically for your own business to promote and market your brand. It can be your brand name or the tagline of your company. It should be unique that defines your business and can be used as your signature tag.

For the marketing of your brand, you should get people to use your unique hashtags. Detailed research for the hashtags you are thinking about is to be done by using Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and Pinterest before implementing. The brand hashtag should be short and easy to spell so that your customers can remember it and use it correctly.

Campaign hashtags are made uniquely for every marketing campaign of your business such as if you are having a summer sale at your store; a unique hashtag can be used for further promotion. As people use your campaign hashtag, an extended reach will be acquired. You can use the name of your current marketing campaign as the campaign hashtag, which will be unique and different to engage your customers. Some of the useful tips on using business and campaign hashtags are as follows:

• It should be unique and consistent

• It should generate awareness and more engagement of the marketing efforts of your brand

• It should be small, easy to remember and spell for your consumers

• It should be monitored so that you can respond to people easily

Trending Hashtags

Trending hashtags are very popular nowadays as people are usually referring to hashtags that are trending and most talked about. They are continuously changing in real-time; a top 10 trend can come and go within a period of merely a few minutes. A trending hashtag can be used when it is related to your business or content. Using a trending hashtag can get your message to reach a massive audience.

However, avoid spam hashtags in your posts particularly if they are irrelevant to your content or business. This could be viewed as a poor etiquette and in some cases, your account may be suspended.

Content Hashtags

These types of hashtags are being used in daily posts. They do not define your marketing campaigns or business or are trending but they are related to your posts. They mainly improve the SEO of your posts by making the consumers see your updates who are searching for, using the hashtag words.

The main categories or content hashtags are product hashtags, event hashtags, lifestyle hashtags, and location hashtags. Product hashtags are the ones that people search for common products that they use. These hashtags help to connect the product to its market. Lifestyle hashtags are used for people who have common lifestyles to market their demographics and hobbies.

Event-based hashtags can be used for specific content updates such as well-known global celebration or product launch. The use of geo-targeted hashtags can help locally-based businesses connect with their local customers.

Now that you have learned the details and use of different types of hashtags, make your content or brands stand out by using these amazing hashtags.

There is a specific way in which developers make codes these days, but usually the outcome is that they end up having bugs and numerous errors. Containerization enables developers to deploy and create better application quickly and safely.

What is Containerization?

For those looking for an alternative to virtualization, containerization is the answer. The general idea or concept of this technique involves packaging or encapsulating the code along with all dependencies, to ensure that it runs smoothly on any infrastructure or platform without issues.

This new technique is showing great potential and maturing quickly. The effectiveness it offers is making is very popular among developers. It also offers numerous benefits. It also helps prevent these issues by bundling the software code with related dependencies, libraries, and files that support it to run smoothly. This approach enables developers to pack everything into a “container” that can run over the cloud or any other platform, without bugs and errors. One important thing to keep in mind is that it depends on stored data.

Importance of Using Containers

Containers are an important and advanced technology that is necessary for cloud computing. Most companies worldwide, small or large, are using containers to improve their software that enables better management. This approach offers continuous integration and delivery, which is beneficial for companies to operate smoothly.

It is right to say that containers are the backbone of private cloud storage systems. In the early days, cloud computing was a major game changer in terms of better control on data storage and sharing, and security. It simultaneously supported the use of multiple cloud-based services. This proved an important development in companies that require uploading new applications and existing applications to the cloud for operation and access.

There are three major reasons why containers are important:

1. They are a modern approach to using applications
2. They create cloud-native applications for enterprises to use at a large scale
3. They support opening a data center that works via the cloud

History and Future of Containerization

This technique has been around for decades, but is gaining traction only recently. The reason for this new development is the emergence of Docker Engine, which was developed in 2013. Docker Engine is an open-source software.

Gartner, a well-known research firm, projected that as many as 50% of companies would turn to Containerization by 2020. This is happening.

Moreover, results from a survey conducted by IBM in 2017 show that this adoption has happened even faster than predicted. The research suggested that 59% of companies had already adopted containerization to reduce the defects in the new apps developed to facilitate businesses.

Benefits of Containerization

Portability      

Containerization offers a container, in which all executable files are tied together to ensure that the software launches on OS (operating system). Rather, it is more portable and can run across any cloud or platform there is. Developers will not have a problem building new code for every platform to avoid bugs and errors. Rather they would use containerization and solve all their problems.

Speed

Containerized containers are also known as “lightweight.” They can share the operating system of the machine without causing other technical glitches. This results in the servers being more efficient and productive. Moreover, it is cost effective in terms of licensing and server management. It also increases the speed of operations.

Fault isolation

Each container is not dependent upon any other container in containerization. If one container were having a problem, it would not disturb the other containers. The developers can work on a specific part of an application while not ruining the whole application at the same time. This is great for developer teams, as they do not have the hassle of rewriting code, repeatedly, a thousand times.

Efficiency

As we already know, containers can share the OS of the machine. Containers can share information with other containers, which can result in a faster and efficient time to carry out a specific task. This will make sure that fewer numbers of containers are bought, resulting in less amount of licensing and server expenses.

Easy management

There are special platforms that support the execution of containerized files. This enables easy management of the containerized apps, and rolling out of the apps. Generally, this provides ease in debugging, monitoring, and debugging.

One such platform that is quite popular for orchestration of container systems is Kubernetes. It is an open-source platform or technology, which Google owned previously. It originally automated Linux containerized functions. Now it works with other container engines like Docker and others that comply with the OCI (Open Container Initiative) standards.

Security

As data is stored in containers and is isolated, this prevents any mischievous code from entering the application and resulting in shutting down the whole process. Containerization security may be compromised. When people have applications that contain sensitive information or data, it becomes mandatory to use robust and additional security measures. IT professionals can integrate these measures into the containers for effective security of data. Many security measures can be taken such as any unwanted code entering the containers that can be automatically blocked and not allowed to enter the containers.

Drawbacks of Containerization

Site constraints

As containers require loads of space, most sites do not have that much server space to allocate to containers. This is why many sites are hesitant in this new technology. If they implement this new technology, they would have to buy loads of server space so more server cost.

Limitations in running on bare-metal speed

Generally, compared to virtualization, containers tend to consume more resources and that too efficiently. However, it is common for containers to lack in performance due to the lack of networking infrastructure, and poor interfacing between the host system and the containers. Other similar issues tend to exist. To achieve 100% bare-metal speed, you must use bare metal.

Fractured container ecosystem

Due to a huge competition between container companies, some container products do not work on every other container. For example, containers by Red Hat like OpenShift only work on Kubernetes Orchestrators, and not on other platforms.

Complicated data storage

Superficially, once the container shuts down, all the data inside the container vanishes; unless you have, a backup stored somewhere. You can save data persistently in Docker Data Volumes, which is a complicated thing to do, and most people are not yet familiar with it.

Poor performance of graphical applications

You may be aware that some character systems organize server applications. They do not need a graphic interface. Likewise, some creative strategies like X11 video forwarding allow you to run GUI apps inside the container. These solutions are difficult to use, and seldom work.

Containers do not benefit all apps

Although containers seem to be a great development, and tend to make things better for most IT professionals, they may not always be useful. Applications designed to operate as microservices tend to benefit from containers. The main benefit of using containers is that the applications provide an easy packaging mechanism.

Types of popular Containerization technologies

Container runtimes

·         Docker Enterprise

·         CRI-O

·         rktlet

·         containerd

·         Microsoft Containers

Cluster management and deployment

·         Kubernetes

·         Istio and Envoy

·         Apache Mesos

·         Docker Swarm

·         Docker Datacenter

Storage containers

·         BlockBridge

·         EMC / libstorage

Container security

·         Twistlock

·         Aqua Container Security

·         StackRox

·         Aporeto

Operating systems 

·         Alpine Linux

·         RancherOS

·         CoreOS Container Linux

·         Ubuntu Core

·         Red Hat Atomic Host

·         Microsoft Nano Server

·         VMware Photon

A Comparison of Virtualization & Containerization

Many people compare both of these techniques because they are similar in the types of software they allow to run. However, the containerization approach is proving more beneficial than the other and becoming a favorite among IT professionals.

Compared to Virtualization, Containerization uses less resources, and enables better use of computing resources.

The use of virtualization allows IT Professionals to use multiple OS and Software at the same time, and even share the available resources on a single computer. This means that IT companies can run Linux, Windows, and multiple versions on OS and multiple apps on a single server.

The entire data (the OS, libraries, related files, dependencies) are packed into a container forming a virtual machine. Having multiple virtual machines running on a single server increases savings by reducing operational, energy, and other costs.

On the other hand, containerization uses the resources in a more efficient manner. It creates a single package of the entire application, bundling it into a code. It configures all related dependencies, files, and libraries that are necessary for the application to run smoothly.

Unlike Virtualization, containers do not bundle a copy of the operating system, but rather, it installs the runtime engine on the operating system of the host system or server. Thereby making it a shared server system for all containers.

Some improvements that can be made to Containerization

• Designing and maintaining templates for the containers

• Adapting/expanding existing governance models and practices

• Conforming to security policies and standards

• Integrating with the existing DevOps environment

• Selecting the right open-source tools from the hundreds available

• New skills or knowledge to manage the new containerized environment

Found this article useful? Share it and let us know your experience and thoughts on Containerization.

In the current digital age, Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms. Its dynamics keep changing, making it essential to keep up with this amazing platform. As Instagram has created a huge record by having active users over one billion per month, its demand for influencer marking has grown twofold. Instagram started as a platform where people share images, but it has now become a primary source of revenue and leads to many businesses. An effective strategy and execution can help you build a community that can improve your brand identity and audience engagement.

What is Instagram Marketing?

Businesses use the platform of Instagram to achieve their marketing as well as business goals by setting some goals, processes, and actions. Instagram marking is a part of social media marketing and is associated with its processes and goals. Over 25 million businesses on Instagram have their profile and use it as a source to promote their services, product, employee engagement, and brand. A huge competition is ongoing on this platform among the sellers who are trying to beat their rivals by producing innovative, reliable, and relevant content. The main goal of the marketers on Instagram is to form a community, produce leads, develop customer service, escalate brand awareness, and allow conversions.

Let us have a look at some of the tips for effective Instagram marketing that can help you gain maximum benefits for your business.

1. Optimization of Instagram Bio

The first thing that people see when they visit your profile is your Instagram bio. It is a small information area underneath the username of your profile to share details about your brand. It should be engaging, informative, and captivating to engage the users. Your Instagram bio should have a proper and concise description of your brand, product, or service. The main key features of it should include the following:

• A short description of the content you intend to make and share
• Using emoticons that are relatable to the language of your brand and content
• Adding hashtags and a URL link can play a big part in driving traffic to your profile

2. Incorporation of Relevant Hashtags

The Instagram algorithm works according to the hashtags as it allows search of content based on the search of hashtags query. Users can follow the hashtags just like Instagram profiles that show up on their feed. The use of hashtags can increase engagement making its use critical for business profiles. A hashtag strategy should be built that has a well-adjusted combination of self-made hashtags, highly popular hashtags, low search volume hashtags, and industry-relevant hashtags.

3. Leveraging Instagram Stories

The stories feature on Instagram has one of the greatest engagement rates on all social media platforms. It is a short video clip or image with a link, gifs, or text that users can view directly from the top of their app within 24 hours. This tool has such a power to connect, engage, and influence the audience in just a few seconds. Instagram stories can be a great way to promote your brand or content with the audience in several ways such as by ‘ask my anything’ feature, hosting a poll, using filters, mentions, and stickers to make them unique and engaging.

4. Responding to DMs and comments

The main key to constructing an interactive community is to build engagement within it. These types of engagement are built by communicating with your followers through direct messages (DMs) and comments. These are the best ways to get in touch with your users and prospects. It should be ensured that DMs are turned on and each of them should be replied, as they are the source of possible leads. Replies can be automated by setting up custom responses, as this will help in liaising with the prospects and follow up with customer needs.

If you want to stay ahead and maximize the benefits of your brand on Instagram in 2020, it is important to ensure maximum engagement. Implementing these tips will surely help you in the success of your Instagram marketing in 2020.

One of the most significant architectural evolution publicized globally was the unification of MVC and API frameworks. The incorporation of the two frameworks has led to a revolution in the web development industry.

The combination of MVC, Web API, and Webpages is now a single programming network, known as MVC 6, which takes away the overlap between the three frameworks. Moreover, ASP.NET MVC 6 can now function as self-hosted like Web API 2 and Signal R.

ASP.NET MVC 6 is regarded as one of the most successful web application frameworks by Microsoft. With every update, a wide range of remarkable features are incorporated that help designers develop highly-scalable and premium applications.

But, before we jump on its functions, let’s take a quick overview of the application.

What is ASP.NET MVC 6?

The ASP.NET MVC 6 is a stack of three frameworks, which are unified and merged into a single combination. The framework serves to create web applications with any of them, and each of them provides a unique template. Thus, give an impression of being disjoint and distinctive to everyday developer.

The framework also comes with other features, which are highlighted as follows:

• json: It is a new file that manages all the dependencies related to a project. All the references for the project mentioned in the file. The citations get added once the file sets aside.

• Dependency Injection: It is built-in in this particular version and helps to manage all the necessary components in the application for instance creation.

• cs: The version has replaced Global.assax, which works to provide methods to register dependency for the application.

• json: The config.json contains the variables of the configuration environment that include the Database connection string.

Functions of unified MVC and Web API frameworks:

With the framework, there are countless characteristics that overcome the challenges and boost your performance.

·         Support for cross-platform:

The establishment of a unified MVC and Web API framework helps you to create applications and set them up at macOS, Windows, and Linux.  It is because the Microsoft team has put an immense amount of struggle in creating Linux, known as the top-tier option for operating ASP.NET.

Top-class performance:

The software is one of its kind and regarded as the fastest web application software accessible in the industry.

·         Asynchronous programming patterns:

The software has excellent support for utilizing asynchronous programming patterns, which include in all common.

·         Razor pages:

With the introduction of the framework, we can access new Razor pages. They help to extend the framework and allow encapsulating the controller and model aspects of a page combined with two-way binding. Moreover, categorized as replacements for WebForms.

·         Multiple development modes:

The software comes with an altered background feature. It permits the developer to differentiate between the parts of code concerning performance in development and production. Earlier, the usual way was applied.

In conclusion, the unified MVC and Web API framework is a well-appreciated version as compared to its previous type. The blog above has discussed some new features which you don’t want to miss.

ASP.NET is a developer platform, created with tools, programming language, and libraries for assembling varied types of applications. It also works to extend its support to a .NET developer with the development of tools and libraries required for building web applications.

Being an independent source, it exhibits another key feature that goes by the name of container support and cross-platform. Therefore, it means that it can function at macOS, Windows, and Linux, making the platform robust and unique.

To understand cross-platform and container, let’s dig in a little deeper.

What is Cross-platform?

In 2016, APS.NET was released with one operating software only, named as Windows OS. Later, it got restructured, and support of cross-platform was included in it.

Here are the features of cross-platform support:

• The cross-platform support is able to to run on macOS, Windows, etc. It can also work efficiently on diverse and numerous divisions related to Linux.

• Another trait that makes it stand out is that it extends support to different types of CPU architecture.

• The cross-platform support also functions to improve and print asp.net applications on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

What is Container support?

The other characteristic of ASP.NET, which makes it one of its kinds, is called container support. The container support helps developers to place the distributed code diametrically in a cylinder.  Many container supports are offered in the marketplace that includes LXC, Cloud Foundry, Docker, Kubernetes, and Vagrant.

In other words, container support is light weighted, standalone, and executed software package that is necessitated by the application to operate. The software includes all of its dependencies, which are:

• Runtime
• Codes
• System Library
• System Tools
• Other settings needed by the application

Simply put, container support helps to build an application once and run it anywhere. Moreover, the developer can isolate each application on a host operating system.

How does the container support work?

Before jumping on to the question of how it works, we suggest you download Docker first if you are operating on a Windows platform. Once you are sure that the application has been installed, follow these steps:

• The first step calls for you to build up and publish a required ASP.NET application.

• Once the ASP.NET is making know, create, and organize a Docker file, which is essential for ASP.NET core application, craft an image for Docker.

• As soon as the image building is finished, you can move to the next step. You can now create and run a Docker container, which appears at the end of the screen.

Once you have finished these steps, you can now see a Docker file is available on the same page where other projects completed by you are saved. As a result, the application you created can now can be operated by Docker file which is available inside the container support.

In a nutshell, the features ASP.NET has makes it extraordinary among others and thus it is effieciently used by web developers.

Have you recently developed an interest in deep learning?

Do you want your business to take advantage of deep learning and flourish?

Don’t worry. We have you covered.

We will ensure that you pick the best framework out there, allowing you to reach your goal quickly.

Azure has created quite the hype. What is it about and how to use it? Let’s enlighten you.

What is Azure?

Azure is a public cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It contains many different services that can be helpful to help grow your organization. It can be used for building, testing, and managing applications.

What are Microservices?

Microservices is an architectural way of building applications that are easily adaptable to change. They are made up of small modules that are connected to other modules.

The main purpose of microservices is to make it easier for developers to develop and change their applications. If developers want to implement a service in an application, they do not need to rebuild the application. Instead, they can simply add it using microservices as it allows services to be added independently.

Benefits of Microservices

Easier to manage applications

As applications are split into different modules and are connected simply with each other, it is very easy to manage it. Adding new services or features to your applications has never been easier as it does not require you to rebuild the whole application to add something new even if they don’t share the same technology stack, libraries, or frameworks. You do not need to search for hours and hours through the code to find where the problem is as each microservice itself is a different chunk or set of code. If a small problem occurs in your microservice, it would not affect the whole system as microservices are independent of each other. It is easier to update your service with new and improved functions.

Productivity

Microservices help you become more productive and eliminate the unnecessary factors which will make you less productive. This makes the development process for developers faster and more manageable. Microservice’s architectural structure allows different teams to work on different parts of the application simultaneously which results in a faster and more efficient development process.

Flexibility

Microservice can be written and used in different technologies. This makes sure that your creativity is not limited to one technology only. You can use any technology which can be beneficial for the service you are providing. Code can be written in different languages in different microservice components and they would not affect each other as microservice is independent. This also helps ensure that if any new and advanced technology is invented, your whole system does not need to be rebuilt from scratch.

Simplicity

Microservices are very easy and simple to understand. This helps out developers who are new to this concept. They will adapt to it easily and help their organization grow using microservices. Developers are not bombarded with a mix of things as everything in microservices are organized and set up properly so that they can be managed easily.

The app development industry is advancing at a tremendous rate and, for beginners, it is very hard for them to know where to start.

We make the task easier for you, allowing you to begin learning the best app development frameworks.

React Native

Developed by Facebook, React Native is one of the most popular app development frameworks out there. Many high-performance apps have been built on this framework. It is great for developing both Android and iOS apps, and is a powerful and reliable app.  Also, it has a cross-platform framework ability, which helps speed up the process for developers.

Flutter

Developed by Google, Flutter is a software development framework. Easy-to-use, it uses the same code for iOS and Android and has a flexible UI that is immensely helpful for developers.

Ionic

Ionic is a widely-used open source framework built with Angular and Cordova. Its specialty is that it can be used to develop apps for three different platforms: iOS, Apple, and Windows. This framework is easy to adapt to and has its set of default UI elements used to help developers focus on advanced features rather than the basic ones.

Xamarin

Acquired by Microsoft, Xamarin is an open-source framework which also has the ability of a cross-platform framework.  It uses the same code for iOS and Android. With a huge community of more than 1.4 million developers, it uses the programming language C# so you do not have to learn Java for app development.