| Elampooranan A | - @elams5star

The internet defines Software Testing / Quality Assurance as the process of executing a program or application with the intent of identifying bugs.
The QA team is like the Electricity Board, where no one cares when everything goes well, but all fingers point at them when something goes wrong!

Here, at Influx, we define QA as a planned and systematic way of creating an environment to ensure that the process of validating a piece of software meets its business and technical requirements as well as end-user needs.

To deliver high-quality products and services to customers, we perform reliable quality assurance tests from the end-user’s perspective by finding conditions that must be met in all the phases of delivery. We strictly follow the PDCA — Plan, Do, Check and Act— rule in our QA processes to validate and verify the usability and functionalities...

| Sountharya M | - @msountharya

Recently, Google unveiled a new technology at its annual developers’ conference in Mountain View, California. The tech giant says the technology is called VPS, or Visual Positioning System, with augmented reality. To help guide people to their destination, Google is introducing a navigation system feature in its Google Maps app that uses augmented reality.

 What is Augmented Reality?

You might recall an earlier post on this blog about Augmented Reality. AR is technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.

 How it works?

Google has been providing the street view with a direction marker. Now the tech-biggie has announced that they will release a new Augmented Reality feature that is going to combine Google’s existing Street View and Map with a live feed from your phone’s...

| Ebenezer Davidraj | - @ebedavidraj

 Principles for using social media in a nonprofit organization

1. Commit
2. Set Goals
3. Plan your voice
4. Create Good Content
5. Respond to your audience
6. Listen to your audience
7. Excel
8. Maximize your efforts

 Importance of feedback and responding

• Create a policy for interaction with any and all feedback and stick to it.
• Feedback is also engagement with audience.
• If a lot of people are liking the content, but not sharing it, what’s missing?
• What can you do to encourage more sharing? Listen to what your audience is saying and what they are not saying

Response Policy: Always respond; always respond kindly.

 Brainstorming sheet

• Content
• Platforms
• Goals
• Paid Ads

 Creating your social media strategy

1. Set a Goal
2. What is the message and voice you want to portray?
3. Do you want to give them an inside scoop-bringing them in as insiders?
4. ...

Avanthika Sivakumar - @avsiii

As a millennial, I witnessed the advent of ‘Social Media’ during my pre-teen years. It started small, first a Facebook account, then Instagram, and soon rose in importance in all our lives.

It made sense for brands to naturally shift their marketing efforts to platforms with growing consumer bases. Not only was it faster, less expensive and more targeted, it seemed like the best possible way to connect with the audience. After all, a majority of teenagers start and end their day by checking social media! (And many more times in between.)

With this power also comes a great responsibility for brands to send the right messages to the audience. The best advice would be not to blindly grab people’s attention for sales, but to create a genuine connect which would lead to a lasting relationship with the consumer.

In today’s world, with all the clutter on...

| Daniel Anandaraj Garnipudi | - @dodosamuel

The other day, Harish and I were talking to a new associate who had joined us recently. We got around to discussing the values we see as important in an Influxian. With our strategic plans taking shape, I thought I would pen them down for the world to see!

If you feel you relate to these, what are you waiting for? Read this - Influx Insider I — Want a bus ticket to success? and email us on careers@influx.co.in. Let’s see if we can find you a spot here with us.

There are many values that we consider important at Influx and, in no specific order, I have listed the most important ones here.

 Intelligence

Understanding the needs of the clients and being creative in the digital space is what we strive for. This is the key Influx differentiator when we work with clients. There are many organisations that could build websites and apps, and do...

This month’s guest writer, Sabina Narayan, combines practicality and responsibility with ease and is, in her own words, a “community advocate”. Passionate about the environment, she works to help clean up her part of Chennai, the city in which she lives and works. Here are her thoughts on how we can keep our spaces at home and work healthy and safe.

Do share your comments and suggestions with us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It does make a difference.

I am a mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, animal-lover, community advocate, and victim of having a sweet tooth. I clearly do not mention these roles in any particular order of priority since “victim of a sweet tooth” is at the end.

All my roles are incredibly important to me because each one feeds a part of my being. But, reflecting on it, I realized that seven of them can be described as being a part of the broadest one...

| Mohan AC | - | Hardik Goswami | - | Manikandan R |

At Influx we are always on the lookout for best practices in software development. So, naturally, we were excited when we came across the event called BotsUp - Best Practices for ChatBot Technology and Development, in Bengaluru.

This MeetUp focused on bringing tech leaders and chat-bot enthusiasts under one roof to discuss the current state of the industry, the frameworks that go into building a great chat-bot and what the future holds from a technical standpoint. Three of us from Influx participated in this event.

Some of the key points discussed at the MeetUp by Swapan Rajdev, CTO of Haptik, were,

 ? Conversations > UI

When designing a chatbot, words are more powerful than UI. Because people think and express themselves differently, you need to see each conversation in context.

Focus on:

• Where the conversation starts?
• ...

| Vaidehi Mehta | - @mehta_vaidehi

On 6 February this year, Facebook’s COO, Sally Sandberg’s non-for-profit, Lean In, launched #MentorHer, an initiative to counter the hashtag campaign #MeToo. Sandberg believes that #MentorHer will bring parity and balance the scales with #MeToo, the hashtag that went viral the world over with hordes of women (and some men) speaking up about sexual harassment and assault.

 How it started

Well before hashtags were used, Tarana Burke coined the phrase Me Too for a campaign to express empathy for, and solidarity with, survivors of sexual harassment, especially those who are underprivileged socially, economically or due to race and rank, for women of colour, especially minimum wage earners and underprivileged women, who had experienced sexual harassment/assault.

Alyssa Milano’s #MeToo in October 2017 was a call-out to women, to speak up against...

| Deepa Sai | - @deepasai_pr

Businesses are now thriving on social media at such levels that Mark Zuckerberg had to update the Newsfeed algorithm to restrict the display of branded and public content on Facebook. Brands now have to hustle harder to gain customers’ attention, especially before they are further bombed with algorithms on other social media channels.

An alarming number of brands are active on social media with ill-formed strategies and getting their reputations butchered. This article is to give such brands a harsh reality-check.

 As a brand you just cannot afford to:

• Have an social account with zero posts on them
• Post on social media actively for a while and then “ghost” on your audiences
• Survive solely on piggybacks (retweets, reposts, etc.)
• Borrow tacky photographs and videos of low-res and claim them as your own

Otherwise, your brand will get sucked into the...