Posts in Category: industry

Here’s Why Americans Spent $22 Billion on Video Games in 2014

Despite being decades old, games and computer entertainment in general never seems to fade away. In fact, if the latest developments are any indication, demand for complex interactive virtual worlds is on the rise, and we may soon find ourselves spending much of our time in simulated environments.

But let’s talk present day. To draw a clearer picture of the computer and video game industry as a whole, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) conducted a study on more than 4,000 American households to determine things like who plays video games, who buys the hardware and the content, what types of games are played most often, how interacting with games affects our brains, etc.

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Facebook Gives a Blow to Referral-Dependent Businesses

Facebook has announced new changes to the way it maintains your news feed. If you’re a regular folk with a moderate social activity online, the changes are for the best. If you’re a business that heavily relies on referral traffic, buckle up.

The announcement says the changes are meant to better display the content that matters to you. The changes were necessary because people keep posting more and more stuff, and as this content expands, its reach gobbles up under its own heft.

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If You Could Have Just One Connected Device, What Would It Be?

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

The fine gents at IDC recently crunched some numbers and concluded that smartphone growth is poised to remain strong through 2019, chipping away at the PCs dwindling market-share. In just a few years from now, our pocket computers will reportedly make up 77.8% of the total smart connected device (SCD) shipments.

The IDC report says that the combined total market of connected devices – smartphones, tablets & 2-in-1s, and and PCs – is set to balloon from 1.8 billion units in 2014 to 2.5 billion units in 2019. Smartphones for their part will grow to represent the majority of total smart connected device (SCD) shipments by quite a margin, according to the metrics firm.

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Earth Day Is Cloud Day

Going green usually translates into extra spending, but there’s one particular field where taking the eco-friendly route can actually become profitable – cloud computing. Plus, you get that warm fuzzy feeling deep down inside that you’re doing the right thing.

In light of Earth Day, I’d like to talk about protecting Mother Nature by moving server-dependent operations to the cloud – as opposed to maintaining an on-premise server in a dark room of your establishment.

Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash

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3D Printing Precision Experiment with a Good Printer – Ultimaker 2

For quite a while here at 4PSA we’ve been playing with 3D printing. Why? Because it’s cool and because there are a lot of applications for 3D printing, even in the cloud. We don’t claim to be 3D printing experts, but we took a power user (read engineering) approach to 3D printing which may be interesting to some of you. So we decided to share some stuff with you in a series of articles dedicated to 3D printing.

In today’s article, we want to answer a pretty interesting question – just what level of precision can you expect from a FDM printer? Fused deposition modeling is the most popular and accessible printing technology. The market is already full of printers and even kits you can use to build your own printer that cost as little as a few hundred bucks. For the test, we used one of the best printers available – Ultimaker 2. And yes, Ultimaker 2 may be worth more than a few hundreds, but it’s still an affordable piece of engineering.

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Quantum Computing Makes A Leap Forward As Moore’s Law Approaches Expiration Date

On April 19th, 1965, Gordon Moore wrote a technical paper that predicted the increase of computing power. He initially observed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since ICs had been invented, and he later perfected the law doubling time to two years.

This month, Moore’s Law turned 50. To this day his prediction holds true, but it might not reflect reality in a few years from now. The reason? Our need for ever-smarter computers requires that we rethink the way we build them, and perhaps even the way we operate them.

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How To Find The Perfect Location For Your Startup

Photo by Alex Perez on Unsplash

If you could pick any place on Earth to kick-start a venture, what would it be? Startups are almost synonymous with Silicon Valley, but that’s the media’s fault. In reality, startup companies aren’t typical to America at all. In fact, some of the most innovative ideas today are being brewed in Europe and Asia.

To give everyone justice, a community called Founded X offers this cool website where you pick a country and get instant stats about things that matter to a startup – ease of funding, expertise markets, internet coverage/speed, office rental, corporate income tax, etc. You also get some conventional info regarding the weather, the national dish, the average price of a beer (always a good lifestyle indicator), currency, and population density.

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Education Can No Longer Turn a Blind Eye To Unified Communications

School is mostly about students listening and teachers talking. In order to fill any missing gaps before moving on to the next lesson, we might need to pay closer attention to the student-teacher relationship beyond the classroom walls.

When the bell rings, any communication flow that does exist between tutors and tutees gets interrupted, making education one of the most fragmented processes we undergo as we develop into adults. In recent years, this problem has become easy to address.

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3 Things To Know Before Accepting A C-Level Job

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

C-level is a term that business types like to toss around a lot. It describes high-ranking executive titles – the black suites – within an organization. C-level/C-suite positions are typically considered the most influential, and they are associated with high-stake decisions, high salaries, and very demanding work.

When a big company loses an executive, the hunt is on for someone to fill that chair. Executives aren’t irreplaceable, but they don’t grow on trees either. Which means that the job offer will be attractive as hell. In some cases, it’s so attractive that you might miss some important details. Details that actually matter more than a fat paycheck.

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