It is 2017, and the great obsession continues.

The habit of stuffing websites with keywords under the excuse of “Search Engine Optimisation” (SEO) has not ceased. While keywords are still relevant, they are not as glorified as they once were.

Back in the 2000s, Google directed SEO practices by placing much importance on keywords. Brands earned big bucks by having their websites rank on the first — or at the very least, on the second — of Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs). All they had to do was to become “content mills” and “link farms” by shoehorning keywords into their website content.

They soon ran out of luck.

 Updates that bucked the trend

                                                                                 (Image Source: https://tbsmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/keywords2015.png)

To get rid of the content mill syndrome, Google started updating

What is Artificial Intelligence? What can it do? What can it not? Will it take over our jobs and make humans redundant? If you’re like me, you used to think artificial intelligence was a silly sci-fi concept, but have lately been hearing about robots taking over our jobs. And you don’t quite get it.

 Really? Robots are taking over our jobs?

No, they aren’t. At least, not yet.

AI is a scientific discipline rooted in computer science, mathematics, psychology, and neuroscience. The aim is to create machines that mimic human cognitive functions like learning and problem-solving.

However, like so many other new technologies, AI has generated a lot of unrealistic expectations. For example, simply calling a dating site “AI-powered” doesn’t make it any more effective, unless you write an algorithm to recommend highly relevant matches at scale. Algorithms are not one-size-fits-all. The kind

                                               (Source - Google Images)

 Hola!

CineEurope happened in Barcelona in June this year. This is a trade convention that promotes the social, cultural, and economic value of cinema in Europe and internationally. (If you are wondering what a person like me had to do in a place like that, you should check out who I work for.)

Visiting Barcelona as a tourist had always been on my bucket list. But this time it was business; I represented Influx at CineEurope. In all those hours spent on my passion—which is learning foreign languages—I never thought it would buy me a ticket to Barcelona.

I would have been surprised only if I had cleared my visa interview in the first attempt. I still don’t understand the joy people at the visa office get in speaking those hope-shattering words—“documents missing”, despite everything mentioned in their list being

It is no secret that people everywhere pull all-nighters, work graveyard shifts, and have weekend duties in India. It follows, then, that stress levels and job burnouts are as common as the common cold.

Many companies with stringent cultures try out clichéd programmes to help keep the attrition rates under control. At Influx, our work is a blend of technology and creative services. Work is dynamic, schedules are chaotic, and deadlines bulldoze us every now and again.

 First off…

Influxians are not “employees”; we are Associates. You might ask what the big deal about this is. An employee is just paid to do a job; an associate is invited to connect with the company at a more meaningful level. Our association with Influx is what counts, and yes, that is a big deal.

 We have a knack of breaking free from the daily grind.

We work with clients in different time zones. Yet, you will see

A recent Google study shared that an average user has about 36 apps installed on his device and uses just nine of them on a daily basis. Statistically, only 4% of the apps will be used over a year.

Here are 5 UI/UX/Design tips that we at Influx think are key to making an app usable for the end-user.

 1. One Screen, One Task

Reduce the effort users have to put in to get what they want

Every screen you design for the app should support a single action of real value to the person using it. Design each screen for one thing and one thing only, with no more than one call-to-action. This makes it easier to learn, easier to use, and easier to add to or build on when necessary.

Take Uber, for instance. Uber knows that the goal of the person who uses the app is to book a cab. The Uber app does not overwhelm the user with too much of information; it automatically detects the user’s location

How does a product become a brand?

How does a brand enter your subconscious mind?

What influences a user’s decision?

These are questions that every marketer comes across while branding, questions to which he finds a varied array of answers. Now, what branding is and how it is done may be known to many, but the implementation gets tangled along the way.

“They said I could be anything I wanted…”

It’s as simple as that, You make your brand out to be anything you want it to be seen as. Want to project thought leadership? Do it. Want your work culture to reflect in your brand? Show it off. Want your brand to stand out in an industry? Talk about it.

 What exactly is Branding?

Branding is a process of building a unique name or image with a consistent theme in the followers’ mind, right? For this to be effective, it is important to have a proper mechanism to put your brand out there

Daniel Anandaraj Garnipudi

Today, the buzzwords for most organisations revolves around the “Digital Experience”. These words, along with terms like Digital Transformation, Strategy, Media, SEO, SEM, etc., are all commonplace in small and large companies alike.

Every organisation needs a digital presence for sure, but you have to bear in mind that it is not a one-off spend or one-off exercise. It is a culture. What it takes is a cultural change, a dimensional shift in the way that we think, plan, act, and do.

I recently joined Influx Worldwide—an organisation always in flux - literally! Why? Because we change, we adapt, and we keep ourselves abreast of the latest technologies, so we can ensure that our clients, and their clients, get the best experience (digital and beyond) that we can offer. Nothing stagnates here.

 However, I digress.

I mentioned a few sentences earlier about

Dinesh AC

We talked about PWAs a few posts ago. Now, here’s some deeper gyaan to help you decide whether or not you should go in for a PWA.

 PWA vs Native Apps

There are a bunch of misconceptions about PWAs:

• they only work in Chrome
• they can’t be as smooth as native apps
• there’s no full-screen mode

And so on.

Progressive Web Apps are an established technology that big players like Twitter and AliBaba have adopted with great success.

Traditionally-native features that PWAs can also use are:

• push notifications
• working offline
• adding an icon to the home screen
• being installed into Android (i.e. in the apps drawer and in Settings)
• receiving intents
• launching in {full-screen](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2014/11/Support-for-installable-web-apps-with-webapp-manifest-in-chrome-38-for-Android?hl=en)
• clipboard access
• persistent auto-login using the Credentials Manager API

Ratheesh Nair

A few years back I was working with a product-based company that made mobile apps using different platforms like, say, EMP. That’s the Ericsson Mobile platform and is proprietary for all Sony phones. I would test those applications to check if the functionality works or not. Beyond that I didn’t bother with the usability factor.

 And then, the smartphone arrived

The smartphone evolved from small-screen phones manufactured by different brands. They came with limited options to access the internet, audio and video features, and different Mobile Operating Systems . This made developing an application for the mobile phone more complex, leaving little time to market the product itself.

 First, what is a smartphone?

Turns out, the actual definition, no matter the source, is quite vague. Merriam-Webster concisely calls a smartphone “a cell phone that includes additional