Laura Kalbag wrote How to read RSS in 2020. This would be a nice place to send someone curious about RSS: what it is, what it’s for, and how you can start using it as a reader. I like this callout, too:
Sometimes the content is just an excerpt, encouraging you to read the rest of the content on the original site. I think this defeats the point of providing RSS, where a big benefit is that the reader can customise how the posts display in their feed reader to improve their reading experience.
I absolutely love Khoi Vinh’s writing, but have long been surprised that his feed is truncated. Barely even excerpts. WHY KHOI WHY?!
Laura linked up lire as a reader, and I’d never seen that one before. It’s apparently got good screenreader support.
Louis Lazaris wrote Front-end RSS Feeds (2020 Edition). It has OPML files that are in big groups of feeds that you’ll be subscribed to once their imported into a feed reader (some have that as an option). There is also just a big list too.
I haven’t had a chance to play with Unread 2 yet for iOS, but I love the idea that it “automatically determines which feeds contain only article summaries” and goes and fetches the rest of the content from the site for you.
Do you have a research paper to write and don’t know where to find someone who can write for you? There is a great solution for you. If you don’t have enough time for your homework and research papers, you can use writing services to get done with your assignments. But can they actually be […]
You might notice a new little activity indicator on the site now, right next to where it has always said "Activity" in the sidebar.
That might tip you off that there is something new happening here on CodePen in regard to activity, but that little indicator is just the tip of the iceberg!
We've entirely re-written Activity on CodePen, taking it from (cough) pretty bad to what we think is (eye twinkle) pretty good. Tap that link and you'll see a new drawer slide out (far more quickly, we might add) that showcases interesting social things that have happened to you and your work recently.
The big visual change is that you'll see actual user avatars next to the activity, along with image previews of the relevant items. We hope it makes Activity a lot more clear when you can actually see what's going on. Just as useful, activities are "rolled up", meaning if 5 people follow you, you'll see them all together on one line. All the information is still there, it's just a bit more compact and hopefully easier to digest than looking at a long string of single actions.
We also still have a dedicated page for your activity.
This page will have much deeper lists of activity on a single page, and still be paginated to go back in time as far as you like. You'll see things in here like the actual comment someone left on your Pen or Project.
Keen-eyed CodePen historians will notice that we have removed your username from these activity page URLs as that was... not useful. Even more useful is the fact that this page loads quickly. Users with a decently high number of followers on CodePen probably never even tried to look at this page after a while, as it could take absolutely forever to load (literally like 30 seconds or more, and then that again to paginate). Now it's zippy zippy.
Your own activity is there too for basic actions you take like forking and creating things. That's nice to have so you (or we) can reference if a Pen was deleted or the like.
Like our brand new Following experience, this is powered by a service we are using called Stream. We've got a few more things coming that will be Stream-powered as well as we learn more about using their service to its full capability. Namely, feeds that are more personalized for you and the things that you like.
High fives to Rachel and Klare who took the lead on this feature.
New York State has announced the formation of a new technology service partnership program that aims to accelerate the state’s technological response to COVID-19. The initiative is specifically encouraging partnerships with individuals that work in product management, software development/engineering, hardware deployment & end-user support, data science, operations management, and design.
This is so cool. I mean, GraphQL is already cool. It’s very satisfying to write an understandable-looking query for whatever you want and then use that data in templates.
But what if you didn’t have to write the query at all? What if you just wrote the templates pretending you already had the data, and the query built itself? I haven’t even tried this project yet but it feels like how things should be.
Reminds me of how Perch CMS doesn’t ask you to model data up front. You build page templates, and the CMS creates data entry pages based on the data you need in the template.
Hi, I have one form with multiple reading data (using BindingSource) and I want to store those data + some text entry to third table (also using BindingSource DataGrid)
Is it possoble to do that using sql statement ? I have connection to database. Picture is to show what I have on my mind.
If someone can give me example, just as guidelines it would be great.
foe example, how to save into database
combobox1.text (PID)
textbox1.text (PVAL)
combobox3.text (Customer)
This is code on my form from attachment
Public Class Form2
Dim con As New OleDb.OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=|DataDirectory|\invoicedb.accdb")
Private Sub Button1_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Me.Close()
Form1.Show()
End Sub
Private Sub Form2_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
'TODO: This line of code loads data into the 'InvoicedbDataSet.rac' table. You can move, or remove it, as needed.
Me.RacTableAdapter.Fill(Me.InvoicedbDataSet.rac)
Try
con.Open()
If con.State = ConnectionState.Open Then
Label5.Text = "Connected"
Else
Label5.Text = "Not Connected"
End If
Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox(ex.Message)
Label5.Text = "Not Connected"
Finally
con.Close()
End Try
'TODO: This line of code loads data into the 'InvoicedbDataSet.invoice' table. You can move, or remove it, as needed.
Me.InvoiceTableAdapter.Fill(Me.InvoicedbDataSet.invoice)
'TODO: This line of code loads data into the 'InvoicedbDataSet.customer' table. You can move, or remove it, as needed.
Me.CustomerTableAdapter.Fill(Me.InvoicedbDataSet.customer)
'TODO: This line of code loads data into the 'InvoicedbDataSet.company' table. You can move, or remove it, as needed.
Me.CompanyTableAdapter.Fill(Me.InvoicedbDataSet.company)
End Sub
Private Sub Button2_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
End Sub
Private Sub ComboBox2_SelectedIndexChanged(sender As Object, e As EventArgs)
End Sub
End Class
Zoom has updated its iOS app to stop sending specific data to Facebook. Zoom's announcement came after Motherboard reported that data such as timezone, city, device details, and time of app open were sent to Facebook without users' knowledge.
In an earlier Discussion post, I complained about MS changing my preference settings with each update. Since, I have found many more changes. One was, I had gone to CMD Properties and set CMD to always open with elevated privileges. You guesses it. It was switched back.
With the 1909 Cumulative Update we lost our ability to search within folders. After trying eleven 'fixes' touted on the Internet, I had to uninstall these latest updates to get my search option back. I do wish MS would spend more time correcting errors such as this rather than on inventing witty and meaningless terminology.
Case in point:
I use to spend a lot of time developing my Speech Recognition dictionary. In the past two years, I haven't devoted any time to it. Today, I decided to pick it up again. I was greeted with this heading:
Configure your Speech Recognition experience
In essence, Configure an experience.
Is there any one of you who can tell me just how you can configure an experience?
Me thinks I will need hip boots for future 'new' terminologies.
WordPress is a dinosaur. If you are a PHP programmer and have had the opportunity to work outside of WordPress in the past 10 years, there are likely one or two or a few dozen things that frustrate you when diving back into the project’s 16-year-old codebase. At a time when WordPress is gifting JavaScript programmers with the latest and greatest goodies, those doing PHP work can feel left behind.
There is a good reason for the legacy code in WordPress: it is backward compatible with over a decade of third-party extensions. Plus, old code does not necessarily equate to bad code. If it ain’t broke — well, you know how the rest goes.
Last year, WordPress bumped the minimum requirement for running the software to PHP 5.6 or newer. Many developers cheered in support of features such as short array syntax, namespacing, and the spread operator. Others wanted to jump to PHP 7+, but PHP 5.6 was a good stepping stone to more modern PHP code.
This change opened some new questions. When will core WordPress begin using new features? What coding standards should the project follow?
WordPress 5.3 made use of the new spread operator, which cleaned up and simplified several functions. It showed a willingness of the core leads to update some outdated code while avoiding backward-compatible issues.
An Updated Set of Standards
To begin using modern PHP features in WordPress, the platform’s coding standards must evolve. On March 20, Juliette Reinders Folmer proposed an extensive set of guidelines. The proposal is a draft and will need to be fine-tuned based on feedback from developers and core contributors.
“While it may still be a while before some of these features will actually be adopted for use in WordPress Core,” wrote Folmer, “defining the coding standards in advance will allow for a consistent code base when they do get adopted and will allow for plugins and themes, which are not necessarily bound to the PHP 5.6 minimum, to safeguard their code consistency when they start using more modern PHP already.”
The proposed standards are broken down into the following topics:
Namespace declarations
Import use statements
Traits and interfaces
Type declarations
Declare statements / strict typing
The ::class constant
Operators
Additional new rules covering various items
Any code that goes directly into WordPress must follow the project’s coding standards. It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers adopt the same standards, but it is not a requirement for inclusion in the official plugin and theme directories. Coding standards across an ecosystem make it easier for one developer to pick up code from other developers without having to learn unique styles between extensions.
On the whole, the update look solid. There is a lot to like about this proposal, and it would be a welcome addition to a set of guidelines that sorely needed a refresh.
One of my biggest gripes is around file naming. The WordPress project should drop the use of class-, interface-, and trait- prefixes from PHP filenames. Instead, we should use this opportunity to adopt the PSR-4 autoloading standard’s naming convention. In that standard, the filename matches the class, interface, or trait’s name exactly. At the very least, the prefixed filenames should not be a recommendation that goes out to WordPress developers everywhere. Keep it for core if necessary for tradition, but don’t recommend widespread usage of a system that is years out of touch with modern PHP.
I would also like to see WordPress adopt the use of Pascal case (i.e., ExampleProject) over camel caps (i.e., Example_Project) for namespaces. However, given the tradition of camel caps for class names, I do not see this changing. This is a bit nit-picky, but it feels out of place in comparison to other, more modern PHP projects.
The biggest thing the WordPress developer community can do right now is to discuss the proposal and offer feedback. Most of the work is done. It is up to the community to help push it forward.
Want to jump straight to the answer? The best call center services for most people is Nextiva.
Call centers are essential for helping medium and large businesses manage communication with customers. But trying to organize an in-house call center can be costly and labor-intensive, especially if your company has limited resources.
That’s why we recommend using a call center service to outsource all of your calls. This takes a huge responsibility off your shoulders and allows you to provide outstanding service to your clients or customers. We’ve identified the top six call center services for you to choose from.
The 6 Best Call Center Services of 2022
Nextiva — Best overall (For a limited time get 25% off, plus a free phone, when you sign up!)
Go Answer — Best inbound call center outsourcing for small business
TeleDirect — Best call center service for managing reservations
One of the drawbacks of fully outsourcing your call center is being in the dark about the people handling your callers. It’s no good if you’re getting poor feedback from customers and you don’t have the means to train current staff to improve or replace poor performers with new hires.
Nextiva offers you an in-between solution that still delivers savings.
Nextiva’s call center software allows you to run it entirely from the cloud. That means you can have a fully distributed network of independent contractors manning your call center phones from any location.
Yes you’ll still pay for some labor, but there’s no need to outfit a wing of your building with a full PBX phone system and the expenses that come with that. With Nextiva, you’re saving money while still maintaining full control over your call center and the people fielding calls.
Nextiva’s call center software runs on its Nextiva One platform. That may sound like a big investment itself, but it’s not. There’s no need to install new equipment. Since it is a VoIP solution, Nextiva implementation is a snap.
Plus, it’s altogether affordable. Nextiva One starts with the entry-level Essential plan, which comes with unlimited voice and video calling, toll-free numbers, an auto attendant, and mobile and desktop apps.
Pricing scales based on the number of users. Four or fewer means you pay $23.95 per user per month. As your team grows, price per user decreases.
Adding call center capability increases your per user per month charge by just $50. You get everything you need to set up a remote call center at a predictable cost of around $70 per user per month. That price includes no limits on minutes or callers in the queue.
Get the best of both worlds—keep control of your call center workers while still saving money by letting them work from anywhere (including their own mobile phone) with Nextiva.
Go Answer – Best Inbound Call Center Outsourcing for Small Business
Go Answer specializes in inbound call services for small businesses. They also provide answering services and legal intake services. More than 5,000 businesses throughout North America trust Go Answer for their outsourced contact center needs.
Go Answer expands beyond simply using the phone to communicate with your customers. They also handle communication via email, web chat, and SMS.
These are some of the top features and benefits of using Go Answer as your call center service provider:
24/7 live agents
Order entry
After-hours availability
HIPAA compliance
Appointments
Legal intake
SMS and email alerts
Real-time mobile app and dashboard
All of your messages and voicemails are available in the mobile app. You get real-time updates and notifications delivered via push notification, text, or email.
The contact center services from Go Answer are designed for medium to large businesses with a high call volume. They provide customized solutions for a wide range of industries. The agents become an extension of your team.
Go Answer supports multi-channel communication and ticketing for customer support inquiries as well. It also boasts some of the fastest pickup times in the industry.
You’ll also have free access to their mobile app, AlwaysOn, and you can try the answering service risk-free for 30 days with a trial.
The answering service is geared toward smaller organizations. It’s a reliable way to make a professional impression on your customers. Some of the most common industries using Go Answer include legal, real estate, publishing, finance, and ecommerce.
Like most call center services, the rates for Go Answer are unavailable online. You’ll need to contact their sales team for a custom quote based on the specific needs of your organization.
TeleDirect works with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and everything in between.
It offers both inbound and outbound call center services for businesses. Teledirect also has specific solutions for reservations and managing leads.
Businesses can use TeleDirect’s inbound call services for things like processing orders, qualifying leads, tech support, and help desk assistance. Since TeleDirect has agents available 24/7/365, it’s a top solution for after-hours support and call overflows.
TeleDirect has experience handling calls from a wide range of businesses. Common industries that trust this call center service include retail, financial services, healthcare, insurance, and tech.
The outbound calling services from TeleDirect are exceptional as well.
Your business can use this call center service for things like appointment setting, market research, lead generation, customer retention, event registration, surveys, and callbacks.
TeleDirect specializes in registration services. The company has handled over 1.6 million customer reservations across multiple industries. It’s a fast and efficient way to get people to RSVP. This service is perfect for seminars, events, workshops, and open enrollments.
The call center reps at TeleDirect are friendly and professional. They know how to make an excellent first impression for both inbound and outbound calls, regardless of the call reason.
I’d recommend TeleDirect for businesses of all sizes. It’s even a top solution for smaller businesses that just need assistance with after-hours calls and overflow.
Five Star Call Center – Best Outbound Outsourcing Service
Five Star Call Center has everything your business needs to manage customer service calls. They provide call center outsourcing, inbound voice, outbound voice, contact center software, and call center consulting.
This company has 35+ years in the call center outsourcing industry.
Common inbound call center outsourcing services from Five Star Call Center include:
Scheduling
Referral services
Tech support
Help desk
Upselling and cross-selling
Reservations
Order management
Customer loyalty programs
Consumer information
Five Star Call Center also provides outbound calling for both B2C and B2B companies. Here are some of the popular outbound calling services:
Lead generation and lead qualification
Sales for products and services
Market research, surveys, and polls
Quality assurance
Customer retention programs
Crisis management
Membership renewals
Email and direct mail follow-up
Payment reminders
As you can see from both lists, the services offered by the outsourced professionals at Five Star Call Center are extensive. All of the call center hubs are based in the US. There are five call centers in the midwest located in South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
With over three decades in the call center service industry, Five Star Call Center knows it all. They’ve helped businesses across every industry you can imagine.
However, there are certain industries that Five Star Call Center specializes in. That includes retail, hospitality, product support, finance, healthcare, and professional services.
Many call center services on the market today offer inbound and outbound calling. But sometimes, these providers have an edge in one category over another.
Five Star Call Center definitely qualifies as a top outbound call center service.
The outbound services are robust and results-driven. The agents go above and beyond just reading from a script. They know how to connect with the caller on the other end of the line to accomplish whatever goal you’re trying to achieve.
SAS – Best Outsourced Call Center Answering Services
SAS stands for Specialty Answering Service. As the name clearly implies, the SAS call center’s primary focuses is an answering service.
In addition to the answering services, SAS provides call center outsourcing, dedicated call centers, lead generation services, and virtual receptionists.
SAS has bilingual receptionists and virtual office capabilities for their live operators.
The answering service is very diverse. While it’s obviously geared toward businesses, many people use SAS for personal use. Entrepreneurs, business owners, and busy professionals rely on SAS as a personal receptionist.
SAS has dispatching services with operators that answer calls in three rings or less. They have toll-free numbers, emergency answering services, and support international calls.
Unlike most call center services, SAS has simple and straightforward pricing listed on their website. Here’s a quick overview of those plans and prices:
Economy — $31 per month + $1.19 per minute
100 minutes — $117 per month + $1.09 per additional minute
220 minutes — $199 per month + $1.09 per additional minute
500 minutes — $490 per month + $0.99 per additional minute
1,000 minutes — $925 per month + $0.95 per additional minute
2,500 minutes — $2,200 per month + $0.89 per additional minute
5,000 minutes — $4,199 per month + $0.85 per additional minute
10,000 minutes — $7,749 per month + $0.79 per additional minute
SAS has a plan for everyone. Whether you need 10 minutes per month or 10,000+ minutes per month, this answering service is perfect for you. As you can see, higher volume businesses get a better discount per minute. But even the low-volume plans are affordable.
While SAS specializes in answering services, they also provide outsourced calling for lead generation, dedicated customer service reps, and other popular call center services.
Signius is a call center service that is 100% US-based. They work with small businesses to Fortune 500s and everyone in between.
Your business can benefit from a custom live call center that matches your brand image and fits within your budget. Signius offers call center services as well as answering services.
Some of their popular call center services fall into the following categories:
Customer care
Direct response
Hotlines
Help desk
Order taking
Disaster backup
Signius takes the time to understand your business. They go through this process to become an extension of your existing team. You have the ability to outsource all or just a portion of your call center functions.
Signius is known for its quick pickup times and modern technology. You’ll also have access to online reporting 24/7.
Your client portal gives you the ability to measure the effectiveness of your call center strategy. The platform gives you information related to single calls as well as your historical data at scale.
Common industries that take advantage of the call center services provided by Signius include:
Small business
Contractors
Property managers
Franchises
Government
Legal
Utility Companies
Healthcare
Universities
For me, the small business call center and answering services from Signius stand out the most.
As a small business owner, you likely won’t need a full call center of agents on-site handling phone calls 24/7. That’s obviously not an effective use of your resources. But Signius is available 24/7 and can answer calls even when your store is closed.
Signius has call transfer services, customized scripts, and bi-lingual solutions. Even if you don’t get a high volume of calls, this will be an excellent option for you to choose.
How to Choose the Best Call Center Service For Your Business
Reviewing the top call center services on the market today is a good start. But how do you choose the right one for your business?
There are certain factors you should take into consideration when evaluating a prospective service. This is the methodology we recommend and use at Quick Sprout.
Use these criteria to narrow down your options.
Variety of Services
Most call center services do much more than just answer phone calls. They usually offer a wide range of other services for things like market research, lead generation, event registration, and call forwarding.
What does your company need help with?
If you’re a small business owner that wants your customers to speak to a live agent instead of an answering machine when they call after hours, you can get by with just an answering service.
But if you’re a larger organization that needs outbound calls for things like lead qualification, sales, payment reminders, or membership renewals, you’ll need a company that offers these extra functions.
Availability and Call Center Locations
The best call center services have live agents available 24/7/365. I wouldn’t consider a call center service that doesn’t offer this.
In addition to consistent availability, it’s essential there are enough agents to quickly answer inbound phone calls. Consider only working with larger services that have multiple locations and plenty of staff on hand.
If a US-based call center is important to you, there are plenty of great choices to consider. You don’t have to outsource your call center overseas if you don’t want to.
Industry
Your call center is an extension of your business. While the live agents making and receiving calls don’t work directly for your company, they are the face of your business to customers when they call.
It’s important to find a call center service that has experience working in your industry.
For example, a B2B company that is using an outbound call center service for event registrations and a doctor’s office using an answering service for post-discharge patients will have very different needs.
Custom Solutions
As consumers, we’ve all experienced phone support where the agent is clearly using a generic script. Those canned responses are applied to every business, regardless of industry or customer need.
It’s frustrating when this happens. You don’t want your customers to have this same experience.
That’s why you need to find a call center service that will take the time to understand your business and its needs. They’ll help you come up with a custom solution to improve the customer experience via phone support.
For further personalization for your customers, some call centers offer dedicated agent services. This means that you will have a few agents who have special training to answer questions specific to your business.
If you need to provide things like technical support for your customers, you may be able to hire a call center that will specialize in helping with these customer queries.
Some call centers may even give you custom overflow capabilities. If all your own salespeople are on the phone, a customized service of the call center may be to take overflow calls as needed.
The pricing structure for most answering services will be completely customized as well. Make sure you understand how you’re being charged before you commit to a contract. In many cases, it’s the most cost-effective to be billed based on usage.
The Top Call Center Services in Summary
Traditional call center services help with a variety of tasks, including recording incoming calls, taking messages for team members, and responding to customer queries based on your company script. Many businesses prefer using the service to enhance their lead generation and lead marketing campaigns.
Nextiva is hands down the superior call center solution, but you can always opt for other solid solutions we’ve reviewed above. In the end, it all boils down to your specific requirements, budget, and locations.
Compare Quotes From The Best Call Center Services
Get matched up with a call center service that fits your specific needs.
This Oracle Groundbreakers Podcast episode features a very special conversation about the current state and future of Kubernetes with Kelsey Hightower.
With the beginning of the cloud era, the need for automation of cloud infrastructure has become essential. Although still very young (version 0.12), Terraform has already become the leading solution in the field of Infrastructure-as-Code. A completely new tool in an emerging area, working in a new programming model – this brings a lot of questions and doubts, especially when handling business-essential cloud infrastructure.
At GFT, we face challenges of delivering Terraform deployments at scale: on top of all major cloud providers, supporting large organizations in the highly regulated environment of financial services, with multiple teams working in environments in multiple regions around the world. Automation of Terraform delivery while ensuring proper security and mitigation of common risks and errors is one of the main topics across our DevOps teams.
Sometimes we want our bot to give some extra information that the user did not explicitly request, such as special deals, promotions, and more. In Teneo, this can be achieved using prompt triggers.
Prompt triggers are tested after the normal flow execution, right before the response is given. If a prompt trigger matches, the flow containing this trigger will be executed and the resulting output will be added to the response. In the example below, the first part of the bot answer comes from the ‘User wants to order coffee’ flow, while the second, highlighted, part comes from a flow that has a prompt trigger:
When you need to query documents using SQL, there are two options available in Couchbase. The Query service and the Analytics service. Our blog, N1QL: To Query or To Analyze? provides a detailed overview of both services. I highly recommend reading it before this one. This article aims to expand on the previous blog by adding some concrete, hands-on examples. For each example we’ll cover how to write the query in both services and we’ll look at the performance differences. The goal is that readers will walk away with more knowledge to help quickly identify patterns and use cases that best fit each service.
Summary
Before jumping into examples. Let’s refresh ourselves on the high-level key characteristics of the two services.
Purchasing a new enterprise analytics solution can be a great experience if you’ve never purchased software before, yet it can be a daunting task. There can be a variety of analytics vendors with overlapping features for a use case yet each has its strengths and weaknesses. As an alternative to purchasing ready-made SaaS, you can also build your own in-house API analytics infrastructure on top of open-source software like Spark, Druid, and Elasticsearch. This article digs into when it makes sense to build vs buy ready-made analytics solution and provide a point-based framework for evaluating API analytics solutions and perform the proper diligence.
The first decision a company should make is whether they want to build the infrastructure or purchase a ready-made solution. There are benefits and risks to both. In general, purchasing shortens the delivery of a well-polished analytics solution with lower cost in time and money compared to homegrown, but a homegrown gives you greater control over what is tracked and presented.
