SUBMIT TICKET

Category: Career

Machine Learning Vs Predictive Analytics: What’s The Difference

Posted on by pumex_admin

As Artificial Intelligence becomes more involved in business operations, the terms “machine learning” and “predictive analytics” are often confused to be the same thing. Though the two are basically under the same umbrella, they are completely different concepts. We decided to break down each concept and explain what they do and why they tend to get mixed up in conversation.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is an artificial intelligence technique where algorithms are used to process massive amounts of data without predetermined rules. Machine learning is growing in popularity for businesses because it allows for them to process massive amounts of data in real time. What makes them so powerful is that MI algorithms learn from their mistakes on past datasets to process future data more efficiently. An example would be feeding a company’s e-mail data to a machine learning algorithm, that would then use specific patterns to determine the difference between spam and important e-mails.

 

Predictive Analytics

Predictive Analytics is an area of study that has been around long before artificial intelligence. Predictive Analytics is the process of analyzing historical data and current data to find patterns. Businesses use these patterns to make informed predictions of the future and make better business decisions. Businesses that use predictive analytics usually have an upper hand on those who don’t. Predicative analytics allow businesses to as an example, make smarter marketing decisions by implementing specific marketing efforts based on past consumer data. If a company sees that a specific type of customer is more likely to make a purchase after receiving a 10% off coupon, businesses will target those customers.

 

Where They Collide

Because the two operations piggyback on each other, people tend to assume they’re the same thing when they’re really two separate operations; where predictive analytics can be a subset of the data garnered from Machine Learning. This relationship has made predictive analytics one of the more favorable applications for businesses trying to gain insight on their customers’ buying habits.

Whereas, the organization’s that implement Machine Learning allows the businesses to process their data faster and more efficiently. After machine learning has processed the data, businesses are able to take this data, implement a predictive analytics strategy, and are then able to make educated predictions to support their business efforts moving forward.

 

Looking to implement a machine learning solution to help process your organization’s data sets? Contact us at Pumex Computing and we can start the discuss what the best solution would be for your specific needs. https://www.pumex.com

Why Your Job Ad Is Terrible

Posted on by pumex_admin

We can all agree that job ads aren’t the most exciting thing to read. Companies will type up a summary about themselves, a list of technical skills that are required for the position and throw it on the internet expecting to have high-quality talent begging to be hired. That is simply not the case. We’ve seen a lot of job ads that fall flat and to be blunt, are just terrible. You spend all this time working on selling your services and products to customers, so why would you not do the same to sell yourself to quality candidates? We’re here to help. We put together this article that breaks down three major things you can do to start creating better job ads to attract high-quality talent.

We can all agree that job ads aren’t the most exciting thing to read. Companies will type up a summary about themselves, a list of technical skills that are required for the position and throw it on the internet expecting to have high-quality talent begging to be hired. That is simply not the case. We’ve seen a lot of job ads that fall flat and to be blunt, are just terrible. You spend all this time working on selling your services and products to customers, so why would you not do the same to sell yourself to quality candidates? We’re here to help. We put together this article that breaks down three major things you can do to start creating better job ads to attract high-quality talent.

Not Enough Information

The majority of talented candidates are happily employed. A lot of companies don’t take into consideration that they need to excite these candidates and show them that it is worth the jump. You need to sell your company to candidates the same way you’d sell your company to potential customers. Exciting a candidate to make the jump is going to take a lot more than a generic blurb about your company. A lot of Hiring Managers will say it’s on the candidate to do their due diligence to learn more about their company. Frankly, we disagree, just like candidates have to capture your attention with their resumes, your company should strive to do the same in the short period of time someone is looking at the position. A candidate that is worth their salt will do their homework to learn more about a company IF it sparks their interest. You need to create a job ad that will grab a candidate’s attention and make them want to learn more about your company. Provide more information than your company’s generic pitch. Put in details about what makes working for your company special.

Show Them They Can Grow & How

Good employees want to know that they can grow in a company. They also want to know how their performance will be tracked. Creating a value proposition will explain the potential for growth that comes with the position. Also, layout how they’ll be tracked over x amount of time, so candidates can see what they’re being judged on and what is needed for potential growth opportunity. This shows candidates it’s not just another lateral move in their career.

Your Company’s Culture

Detailing your company’s culture and values on the job ad is extremely valuable for attracting quality candidates. One of the biggest concerns for people changing their job is being uncertain if they’ll fit in at the company. Describing what makes your company unique and the type of employee/employer relationship which you are striving for will attract candidates that feel they would mesh with your company. This increases the chance that your hire will fit in and stay at your company because they knew the culture before accepting the position.

Conclusion

Your job ad is the first contact someone has with your company. If you’re looking to attract high-quality talent to your company, you need to excite them with your ad. Show them the value in working for your company and how they will benefit from it. If you implement the changes we mentioned above, you’ll see a big change for the better in applicants. If you think you need more help with your job ads or any step of the hiring process, we specialize in IT staffing and can help you bring your hiring process to the next level. Contact us to hear more about what we do at www.pumex.com

What Makes Drupal So Great

Posted on by pumex_admin

Drupal is an open-source content management system that provides the framework for developers to build websites. Like WordPress, Drupal, is a free open-source CMS and has grown to one of the more popular CMS’s for web developers.

Just like any CMS, there are positives and negatives when choosing to build with Drupal. We decided to break down when and why you should build with Drupal.

Open Source 

Drupal is an open source CMS. This means that it is free to download, install, and make further modifications to. Like WordPress, this has made it popular with web developers. It has also allowed for a forum within the Drupal community that helps with the growth and development of the platform.

The community is not as big as WordPress’s; however, it is made up of over 38,000 active developers. Drupal’s slogan is “Come for the software, stay for the community.” This is surely the reason why many have adopted the CMS and has led to a ton of resources and learning material for novice developers to learn and implement Drupal.

 

Security  

Drupal is known to be one of the most secure CMS’s available. It’s trusted by the U.S. Government at the state and federal level. Unlike WordPress, Drupal doesn’t rely as much on third-party plug-ins for integration and development. This creates a more secure product. Third-party plug-ins open the gate for a website to be hacked if the proper security measures aren’t in place.

Drupal developers tend to be more experienced when it comes to web development due to the higher skill level required to create customizations within Drupal. Since WordPress is easy for novice developers to pick up there can be a greater chance of poor coding practice during the development process that can lead to gaps in security. The idea is that a more experienced developer increases the chance that best practices are followed and therefore making your site more secure.

 

Data Management  

Drupal is the favorite of government agencies, education institutions, and large corporations for a reason; it is extremely adept at handling mass amounts of data and information.

Drupal allows the developer to custom tailor it’s back-end to handle mass amounts of data with ease. This makes it a favorite for major agencies, institutions, and corporations due to the amount of data that they are required to manage.

 

Learning Curve 

Drupal requires a higher skill level than WordPress to develop a successful website. However, because of the size of the community and popularity of Drupal, there is an unlimited amount of resources to learn from. Though it may be a little more complex to develop a high-end website with Drupal, the CMS is still open source, which allows for you to set the bar of how complex you want your website to be.

 

Conclusion 

As with any software solution, the decision comes down to your specific needs. Drupal is an open source CMS, but you will still spend money to hire a skilled developer to efficiently get the most out of the CMS. If you’re looking for a secure website that can handle a large amount of complexity and data; then Drupal is the right CMS for you. It may take more time to develop a Drupal website but in the end, the benefits speak for themselves.

At Pumex Computing we specialize in Drupal web development. You check can out all the full stack web development solutions we offer at www.pumex.com

Hybrid Apps Overtaking Native

Posted on by pumex_admin

There are typically two types of dissenters when it comes to hybrid apps: those who haven’t tried hybrid apps or those who did many years ago.

It doesn’t matter what your current stance on these apps is; the options have evolved tremendously for the better. The hybrid versus native app battle has not only resulted in a tie, but hybrid apps have taken over. The following is an overview of how hybrid apps have progressed and the concerns people have.

Performance

The number one concern people have with hybrid apps is their performance, though this concern really is unfounded now, in 2018. If you look at PhoneGap between the years of 2008 and 2012, then yes, you’re right to be worried.

Luckily, 2013 was a huge turning point for hybrid apps. The release of the iPhone 5 was the start of hybrids being more approachable. Almost 100 percent of the time, hybrid apps work extremely well. Unless your business is interested in creating graphic-heavy, high-performance game apps, hybrid is the way to go. They only need you to update, read, delete, and create data. They also have a little bit of UX sprinkled in there as well. If developing a game is your overall goal, choose native.

It’s been over ten years now since the original version of the iPhone debuted, and mobile device hardware has improved in leaps and bounds. Mobile devices now have processors that are near desktop-quality, 2 to 4 GBs of RAM, and operating systems that have a lot. Each new generation of phone is an improvement from the last.

Besides the hardware improvements, Javascript engines have seen advancements as well. Browser creators are advancing in all elements. They’ve improved single thread performance, increased GPU speeds, used offloading to make faster memory buses and multi-core, and improved multi-threading.

Every few years, Javascript makes major upgrades available which lead to gains of around 4x or more. It’s safe to say that the latest iOS performance will have significant enhancements.

Design

A key feature of hybrid apps that give them an advantage over native apps is their ability to build using a single codebase for a vast majority of app platforms. Javascript logic execution has usually worked well. This is in part due to its “write once, run everywhere” mantra. Javascript has features that are consistently available on every mobile platform. Whenever native device functionality is needed, Java has plugins get rid of any platform-specific features.

Achieving consistent design has proven to be extremely difficult due to the huge variety of mobile platform WebViews, the mini web browsers embedded into native apps shells, available. This can most obviously be seen with Android, as they’ve been the most difficult due to the thousands of device and carrier combinations available.

Luckily, the situation has improved. It started with Android 4.4; a change was introduced that would have the Android 4.4 use a Chromium-based WebView. This first step was a good one, but it was only an embedded system browser. Since it was just that, it was only able to get updates through new OS upgrades. These upgrades only happened rarely, depending on the mobile carrier. When Android 5.0 came out, the WebView was taken out of the system. It can be updated now through the Google Play store, ensuring that the users always have the greatest and latest.

Apple’s iOS has proven to be a lot more favorable for those who develop hybrid apps. WebViews has always used Safari, which is Apple’s built-in web browser. With every OS upgrade or patch, CSS and JavaScript come out with new features. Hybrid apps also make it easier to get support for OS versions that are older because Apple users tend to upgrade as soon as the newest OS is available.

Nowadays WebViews has become standardized, allowing you to get consistent layouts across all different displays and screen sizes. Developers of apps can utilize CSS3 flexbox, and other suitable platforms, to make layout designs that are popular for all kinds of mobile devices.

For normal people, who don’t have any background in design, you can easily work with web frameworks. There are resources, like Bootstrap, that are extremely useful for working on mobile and desktop projects. Resources like this put focus on creating responsive, mobile-first projects that are perfect for helping with hybrid apps.

Frameworks

Over the past couple of years, there have been many open-source frameworks that have entered and left the app space. The playing field has been leveled in recent years. The most popular choices tend to be Xamarin, NativeScript, React Native, and Ionic.

Xamarin is Microsoft’s framework. It’s a little different than other frameworks. Xamarin has its apps written in C#. For developers that work on .NET, Xamarin is great for mobile development.

NativeScript is created by Telerik and is a unique option. When using NativeScript, you write your apps in plain Javascript, Angular, and TypeScript. It’s then compiled into native code. If you use Telerik’s NativeScript then you have to learn their UI custom mechanism for your layout. This mechanism covers tags (such as “” and “”) which are then converted into a certain native representation. Besides that, you can utilize your existing JavaScript skills.

React Native is a framework that is used by Facebook. Apps on this framework are written in Javascript. It’s unique because it uses native components like “Text” and “View” instead of web components like “span” or “div.” So it produces a real native mobile app. Using this to create your apps is great, but it means that the code can be used only for apps that are mobile.

The fourth framework that is popular is the Ionic framework. Ionic provides you the ability to create apps that cover the most number of platforms, using only a single codebase. This means it can be used for applications for mobile, desktop, web, and progressive web. Ionic apps are created on top of Angular. This means that you need to teach yourself about Angular along with TypeScript.

These four most popular frameworks are great options for those wanting to develop apps. However, they do require you to spend time before you actually feel productive. If you’re not 100 percent certain that you want to go the hybrid way then that’s fine. You can dip your toes in the water and try plain web technology. When you become more comfortable, you can switch over to a framework that you like.

Tooling

The last element of app development for hybrid apps is that the number of tools that are available. Those who develop apps can access all kinds of products that will assist with all that you need from cloud management to debugging to continuous integration.

Popular integrated development environments have evolved over the years to support app development that is JavaScript-focused. There are resources that allow developers to debug, write, and test their apps on emulators and devices within their systems.

There are also services like WebStorm by JetBrains, which is an editor that allows you to refactor JavaScript, provides code completion, and is able to detect errors. There are also services that are cross-platform, which you can use to swap between PCs and Mac. This is useful for those who own a MacBook but have a desktop PC.

Each of the frameworks for apps that are listed above has helpful tools to get you started. They each are equipped with their own command-line interface tools that give you useful templates for your app to help you when you start out. They’re truly helpful in the initial setup phases. Many provide local app debugging, JavaScript quality reviews, and end-to-end test execution.

You can utilize many web browser developer tools, which can especially be seen in Google Chrome. They have advanced so much that many web developers use them every day. They have provided a variety of features, including network performance profiling, issue resolution, and JavaScript debugging. The best feature for those interested in developing hybrid apps is probably the ability to test device-specific and responsive viewports. This will give developers an idea of how your app will be displayed on popular devices. It’s down to a perfect science, but it’s still incredibly useful. After all, you can’t realistically be able to test on every type of device there is in existence right now.

The Bottom Line

In the last couple of years, the amount of developers that are in support of hybrid apps is eye-opening. Web developers have shown that they want to create their apps with the utilization of just one codebase. One codebase means that it comes with familiar web technology and tools. Surveys have shown that almost one-third of developers plan to ditch native development completely within the next two years.

Despite the vast improvements to hybrid apps and the technology associated with it, you may still be skeptical about using the hybrid approach. The best way to truly see if it’s the way of the future is to do it yourself. There’s no easier time to jump into the development of hybrid apps. They offer better device performance, advanced tooling, simplified design options, and professional mobile frameworks. They’re the easiest way to transition into today’s new technological world.

Native vs Hybrid vs Cross-Platform

Posted on by pumex_admin
When choosing to develop between a hybrid, cross platform or native app mobile application there can often times be a lot of confusion. The confusion comes in the different approaches used to get the app developed. The choices for any mobile app development company depends on different factors, such as app features, budget, goals, and target customers. Below we will outline the major approaches—native, cross-platform, and hybrid—to these development apps.

Native Applications

This type of application development simply means developing an app specific to each platform. There are platform specific tools to aid in this process, and these tools enable the functionality of the app. These platform specific tools can be anything from XCode to Objective-C to Swift or C++. For android-based apps, Java or Kotlin are typically used.

Pros and Cons to Native Apps

Pros:

  • Stores app resources in the mobile device’s memory, which maximizes OS features.
  • The best tool to use for quality user experience and functionality.
  • iPhone has many resources, reading materials and tools for developing native apps.
  • Native apps have exclusive API’s that can access push notifications, in app purchases, and camera functionality that are usually prohibited in mobile web apps.

Cons:

  • Native apps can get expensive especially if you want the app to be available cross platform.
  • There are also slight variations with the UI on all the different platforms.
  • It is very time consuming to create native applications for both Android and iOS, which can become very costly.
  • Native applications usually have a requirement that only allows the app to define tablets and phones separately. This is non-transferrable between these two platforms.

Cross-Platform Applications

This type of app development uses JavaScript. JavaScript enables the application function and also enables CSS and HTML in order to generate design components. Frameworks like Adobe Air and Corona can call native code in order to take advantage of an operating system and any device’s specific functionality like navigation. Cross-platform mobile development is a good choice for users or companies looking for multi-platform functionality.

Pros and Cons to Cross-Platform Apps

Pros:

  • Using cross-platform apps offers seamless functionality within the OS.
  • It is easy to use code repeatability, hence offering cost-effective solutions to app development.

Cons:

  • These apps often have a non-native feel to them, offering a less appealing user experience.
  • There is also limited functionality to tap into.

Hybrid Application Development for Mobile Devices

The hybrid approach combines all the features of the app developments listed above. Native code is integrated with cross-platform using typical web technologies. These technologies include HTML, CSS and JavaScript. After the app is written, it is then bundled as a native application with an integrated web view. With the new frameworks such as React Native, the hybrid mobile app development approach can be delivered with much less effort while still achieving the same precision as the aforementioned development tools.

Pros and Cons of Hybrid Mobile Apps

Pros:

  • With very little modification the same code can be used over different platforms.
  • This in the long term will save money and time.
  • The functionality of hybrid apps is very similar to native apps, making them very user friendly.
  • The content is portable.
  • Developers have an option to deliver the app locally or through a server, meaning the app can be accessed both offline and online.

Cons:

  • Hybrid is a relatively new platform and may not work on all devices.
  • There is not much support for these apps since they are so new, meaning problems can occur, and there is no troubleshooting available.
  • If the app store you are using recognizes the app as a hybrid, it may be denied through the app store.
  • Some vendors are now offering build platforms for these frameworks, meaning that you may have to pay for it.

The Verdict

There is no absolute choice for any of these options. It depends mostly on what is best for you or the company or venture being pursued. The best choice usually depends upon which requirements suit you best. If the application you are looking for is very complex in functionality, then native apps are the way to go. If an application that crosses multiple platforms is important, then choosing a cross-platform app is the better choice. If the budget is small and you are looking to optimize mobile experiences, then hybrid may be the way to go.

Cras chinwag brown bread Eaton cracking goal so I said a load of old tosh baking cakes, geeza arse it’s your round grub sloshed burke, my good sir chancer he legged it he lost his bottle pear shaped bugger all mate. The creators of the theme are happy with the response and have vowed to create further themes exploring the same concepts