Whether you are looking for productivity help for work great deals on shopping sites, or just a little fun or inspiration, you can find it there. Below is a list of what we think are the best chrome add-ons, and we hope they add a little something extra to your chrome experience too.

1) Panda

Designers and developers alike will love this: Panda pulls in beautiful Dribble shots and popular web design submissions from awwwards.com, along with the latest tech headlines from various sources. You can also preview links without leaving your current tab, and save the ones you like to check out later.

I am no designer, but I still enjoy checking out eye-candy from the amazing Dribble community. When I need to look at tech news and find interesting apps, I hit Alt+3 to switch to the News Freak layout, which displays links from Hacker News, layer vault, designer news, and product hunt.

Besides being a neat replacement for a draw new tab, Panda is a great tool for browsing visual and link-based content. If it resurfaced Reddit posts, I probably would not need my address bar much at all anymore.

2) PullQuote

When you want to share ideas on twitter from around the web, 140 characters sometimes is just not enough. With PullQuote, you can add as much content as you like to a single tweet. Just highlight a sentence or paragraph and the extension will let you tweet the text as an image, along with the original link to the page.

When your followers click through the shortened link, they will be presented with the selected text overlaid on the original page. This will make sure your followers don’t miss the intended text or passage.

3) Smart Video for YouTube

If and when your internet connection is slow and you want to enjoy YouTube videos, you know how painful it can be to get a smooth stream going. Smart video extension allows you to set up YouTube to play only when a video has buffered completely or enough for your internet connections download speed to handle it properly. And you can choose specific videos or across all YouTube content.

4) MailTrack

Get notified when your contacts open your email with this easy to use extension for Gmail. MailTrack sends notifications to your desktop or inbox, offers a dashboard to track read receipts, and unlike mxHero, our previous favorite tool for the job, is free to use for personal Gmail accounts.

5) Evernote

The research you are doing online, this extension lets you save it to a virtual notebook on Evernote, the excellent note-taking and organizational app. Once installed in your browser, the Evernote toolbar icon can be clicked on any webpage to save it in a variety of forms – as it is, in a text-only version, as a bookmarked link, or as a screenshot, which can be dragged to select particular sections.

6) Grammarly

If grammar was not your best subject in school, try Grammarly. It is like an English teacher right over your shoulder, correcting your grammar, spelling, and punctuation as you write. It works whether you are writing an essay for class, composing an email for work, or just creating Facebook work. Believe it or not, this blog you are reading currently is also checked by Grammarly.

The extensions mentioned above are some of the most useful extensions. It is useful for anyone who is looking to up their productivity at work. Most extensions are focused on providing ease of access to users. The extensions will undoubtedly be helpful if you are using google’s chrome browser extensively. At ads! We use most of these extensions to make our lives a lot easier and help increase our productivity.

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In the past, Google’s mission was to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. This made it possible for us to find the exact distance to the moon to the capital of some remote country whose name you have not even heard of before with just a few keystrokes. These days Google has greater ambition. Google Executives shared their vision for the future of the company – one where its services work everywhere, for everyone and for everything.

Google is doing this in ways both big and small. Let’ see.

What’s New?

Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL

Nest hub max

Android Q Beta Launched

New and improved Google Duplex, Search Results, Lens and what Google calls the Next Gen. Google Assistant.

Google Search

Google has integrated new features within its search results known as “full coverage”. This feature mainly allows people to view news related topics easily. There is also a timeline of events shown in the search results. Alongside this Google has also introduced listening as part of the Google search results in which you are able to listen to podcasts from the search results itself. But this is not the only upgrade Google has done to its search results. It has also made search results visually more rich thanks to 3D images and AR camera trickery coming directly to search results.

Google Lens

Google Lens is getting some updates from last year. It is already a very fine app being able to recognize items just by pointing your camera at it. But Google takes it a step further this year by making it able to contextualize a restaurant menu or information on a piece of paper. According to Google “Lens can search for exact dishes on a menu and surface photos of that dish based on Google Maps information to show you just how it looks before you order it and also show reviews on the dish.” But this is not the only thing Google Lens can do no, it is but one of the few things Lens can do. Other things being text to speech live translation, or even bring up a calculator just by hovering your camera over the bill. Hovering camera over the magazines partnered with Google can also bring images to life, such as a recipe on Bon Appétit Magazine.

 Google Duplex

Last year Google introduced Duplex in their mobile devices through which the Google AI places a call to book appointments and reservation at a salon or a restaurant. But this year they are bringing the Duplex to the web. Duplex will pull your information and navigate through the web to book other things like car rentals, movie tickets. Instead of just confirming the booking users are in control of the information they are providing and can change the auto-filled info to approve what Duplex has written in before confirming your booking.

Google Assistant

We all know the personal Google Assistant which pops up when we say “Hey Google” well there’s new and improve Google assistant coming in the future, they call it Next-gen Google Assistant. Google says it can now process and understand requests in real time up to 10 times faster. During the onstage demo, Google showed how easy it is to switch between tasks and toggle across apps without the need for “Hey Google” every time. According to Google, this will make tapping apps across the device a slow experience. The assistant can even also distinguish the difference between requesting an action like “send an email to John” or “Reply” and dictating the message itself. This will be available in Pixel phones later this year.

Other features include Personal Reference and Driving Mode

Personal Reference allows Google Assistant better understand what you mean when you say “What is the weather like at Mom’s House” or “Show me the picture of my Brother”.

Driving Mode pulls up a personalized dashboard for when you are in the car. Say “Hey Google, let’s drive” and it shows you the things most likely to need while driving with voice controls to control everything and everything hands-free.

These two features are available on all android devices with Google Assistant.

Privacy Aspect of things

With all the new features added and made available, there is a serious issue of Privacy infringement. Just like everyone else in Silicon Valley. Google showed just how serious they are and showed us new features to better control them. Incognito mode is now available in Google Maps, so the places you search and navigate cannot be linked to your account, and Google also promises to bring Incognito Mode in Youtube and other platforms as well. All of your privacy and security settings have been moved to a more accessible location on your Google account, with the most relevant controls appearing first. Also, you can choose to auto-delete your data after a certain number of months.

Android Q

Well as always Google’s I/O is not complete without talking about the new version of Android OS. Google announced the launch of Beta of Android Q. The as of yet unnamed Android Q comes with cool updates like a smart reply feature that works across all messaging platforms and a live caption tool that translates videos when the sound isn’t on. The key here as Google puts it, is that the data never leaves the phone the focus is on-device machine learning. You can easily monitor app permissions and Google will prompt you to review which apps have access to data like your location. New parental controls offer better oversight of kids’ screen time and a new focus mode/do not disturb mode lets you neutralize distracting apps like email and news when you are trying to be productive. It also comes with a dark theme that will swap out bright interface colors for black and greys, cutting down on the blue light streaming onto your eyeballs and saving battery life in the process.

Android Q also offers a glimpse at what Google sees as the future of mobile technology with its inbuilt support for 5G and foldable phones.

Pixel 3A and 3A XL

Over the past few years, the sales of the flagship smartphones have gone down. Which is now clear with the rise of the brands like Oppo and Vivo. People are not looking to buy new flagship smartphone every year if you look at the recent trends add to that the mid-range smartphones providing features similar to the flagship phones at a much cheaper price has forced Google to launch their own set of mid-range smartphones to compete with other cheaper brands. With the announcement of Pixel 3A and 3A XL, the rumors have been put to the rest of Google launching its own mid-range smartphone. The price begins at $399.

Also, the Google maps in pixel 3A and 3A XL comes with the AR maps instead of the 2D map we normally see in Google maps. Add updates and support up to 3 years after launching is another benefit.

Nest Hub Max

This is another piece of hardware announced at Google’s annual I/O 2019. Priced at $229 smart display with a 10-inch screen and a front-facing camera for video calls. This is basically the upgrade version of last year’s 7 inch Nest Hub with improvements such as the switch to disable camera and microphone for added privacy. Gesture control for play pause music, and camera tracking to keep you in the middle of the frame all the time. Use the Google Duo app to leave a message to household members. Or with its Face Match feature, you can walk in front of the device and it will show you all your information (your events, meetings, appointments). Notifies you when the camera detects the motion of someone or sees someone the camera does not recognize in your home.

This year Google has taken steps towards making the information not just available but much more easily understandable. With recent developments is Camera technology and the rise of AR and 3D Google’s introduction to the 3D image in search result and capability inserting it in the real world using AR technology shows us the future of search and Navigation. With the help of AI and Machine Learning Google has taken steps toward making life easier, especially with Translate and Text to speech. Google is taking steps to make the world a lot more accessible and understandable with all the features they have unveiled in this year’s Google I/O.

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To those who do not know what a text editor is here’s a simple explanation.

A text editor is a computer program that allows you to create and edit files that contain plain text. This is very different than a robust word processing program like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, or Google Docs because they add special formatting that’s hidden to the user. When you’re writing computer code, you don’t need or want any special formatting. In fact, your code probably won’t work at all unless it was written and saved in a plain text environment.

Text editors are commonly used by web designers and developers because it provides maximum flexibility to create just about anything. This is where professionals “hand code” HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, and many other languages.

And, No a text editor is not an IDE (integrated development environment). While most almost every IDE has the capability to create and edit plain text documents, they also include a variety of other features. Some do prefer these power tools, but they come at the expense of other factors like flexibility, ease of use, or code that is both lean and performant. IDE’s also take various screen spaces for all of their various features which is also a factor to the decision making for some people.

Now to answer the question of which text editor to use

As said before there is no definite answer to this question. There are so many text editors in the market nowadays that choosing one over the other is hard. So most developers suggest you try out a few of the text editors around and find the one you are most comfortable with. This way you get to weigh the pros and cons of most of the text editors in the market.

Once you are comfortable with your tool, it means that you are also able to get work done quickly. Since, everyone has slightly different preferences the text editor you choose to work with has you flying with your ideas, which most text editors aspire to this vague goal.

Now let’s check some of the most pros use on a daily basis.

1. Atom

Atom is described as A hackable text editor for the 21st century. It is relatively new to the world of text editors but has gained a huge momentum since it was released in 2014.

Packages

Ability to add additional features to a text editor is very important and is an area that Atom shines at. The package manager is installed by default and to make things even better, all packages are hosted on Github.

Editing and workflow

In general everything in Atom is rather smooth. The biggest pain is figuring out which additional packages to be installed when starting from scratch.

For example, people like using the minimap to help visually skip to parts of a file. Also, recommend to set up autocompletion using Auto Complete+. And for people who often work on multiple files simultaneously the ability to set up split pane editing is a must. It’s a feature atom supports nicely.

Another nice feature that I’ve found in an atom which is sorely lacking in sublime is the drag/drop file/folder support in a tree view. I’m so used to not having it in sublime that being able to shift things around is a real treat.

Finally, the git integration is great. It is made by Github after all!

Performance

If there’s a bone to pick with Atom is that it feels slow. Sometimes opening a file or switching between tabs has enough of a lag to feel painful. When I first tried atom performance was a big problem. It has gotten better since, but the frustration still remains.

Overall Verdict

Atom is a great tool, especially for those who want to customize their editor easily, and beyond what others provide. As a developer, the ability to add, tweak and extend your editor gives an incredible feeling of power. The atom flight manual provides a great starting point for new users.

2. Sublime Text

Sublime was released back in 2007, so it’s had more than a decade to mature. According to StackOverflow’s 2018 developer survey is the 4th most popular development environment.

Packages

Any sublime user will tell you the first package they install is Sublime Package Control Plugin. Like Atom, Sublime has many packages and themes. Some essentials are:

• SideBarEnhancements: without this renaming/moving/duplicating files are not supported.
• GitGutter: Shows git status on the left side next to line numbers.

There’s plenty more to choose from and a lot of helpful ones to boot. Overall sublime’s package support is very good.

Editing and Workflow

The use of projects is critical when working in sublime – it helps me stay focused on the relevant files for what I need. Being able to search file and across files is fast and easy.

As with Atom – the real power comes once you have some key plugins installed.

One downside that I’ve found is there’s no decent Git plugin that lets me do nice diffs and stage changes.

Performance

Here’s where Sublime outperforms Atom – opening, closing, searching is very fast and smooth and fast. The only issue I’ve ever faced with performance is from badly performing plugins – but even then you’ll get a warning message when a plugin seems to be taking too long.

Overall verdict

Sublime is a flexible fast editor. There’s a reason it still makes the top 4 Development Environment in 2018

3. Visual Studio Code

VSCode is a relative newcomer to the world of text editor. It was only released in April of 2015 but has already been picking up a lot of traction. Microsoft has done a great job of creating a powerful and flexible cross-platform editor that’s piquing a lot of interest from developers.

It is not to be confused with Visual Studio IDE that Microsoft has.

Packages

As with our other editors, VScode has a nice plugin ecosystem. The extension management is built-in, and there’s already several thousand available. As with Atom, some come installed by default.
You’ll need to spend some time picking out plugins that are best for your workflow.

Editing and Workflow
Although VS code is built in a similar fashion to Atom using Electron, Node and Html/CSS, it is actually much faster without any real lags.

It has a very familiar feel to Atom and Sublime. The debugging feature was a treat to use. Also, do set up some of the IntelliSense type-ahead completion which will start to show its benefits in a day or so. You could literally whizz through typing out a function name without having to remember the arguments.

As an added bonus, the Git integration is very convenient. Not as powerful as what you get using Source tree, but for common operations like commits and diffs, it proved to be perfect and sped up the development time.

Performance
As mentioned before, although VSCode is built on Node.js, Electron, Html and CSS, it definitely feels fast. I did not experience any lags when opening/changing files. Searching was also fast. In any case, the performance is definitely on par with Sublime.

Overall Verdict

Overall the editor is very impressive, to the point that I’ve considered moving to it more permanently. I’m still yet to take that step to fully dive in. The Git integration and in-editor debugger are great features that many have struggled with in sublime but worked almost immediately in VScode.

The text editor’s mentioned above are currently the most used text editors currently by most developers and are among the most popular ones. Both Atom and VSCode are available to use free of cost and Sublime Text has a free trial version with full version cost of $70.

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Below are some ways to reduce website loading time that we use at Ads!

Ways to make your website load faster

1. Use a CDN.

A CDN is a collection of global servers share a website’s static files, such as CSS and/or Js files, and they deliver from the server closest to the user’s physical location. It is essentially a collection of optimized servers that deliver content to users based on their geographic location. In other words, when a user clicks a video, the file loads faster because it is delivered from a nearby server. Large websites implement CDNs to ensure visitors around the world have a much more accessible, fast experience.

Things you can store on cdn server

1. Images
2. Photos
3. Css and Js Files
4. Other uploaded files like audio, video, pdf’s

Commonly used CDN servers

1. MaxCDN
2. CloudFlare
3. Amazon CloudFront

2. Use Adaptive images/Internet friendly images.

According to HTTP archive, 61% of a website’s page weight on a desktop computer are images. Site size generally and image size specifically, make huge difference to your site speed. The larger your content/images, the slower the site.

Some ways to counteract this is by shrinking/compressing the size of images, reducing the amount of images or eliminating them altogether.

But having no images on a website is boring! Rather than removing them we recommend optimize images before uploading them. Here are some ways:

1. Compressing the picture
2. Changing the resolution of the image.
3. Cropping the image.

You can use tools like photoshop and gimp or even online tools like tinyjpg to compress image.

3. Use Plugins Sparingly.

Plugins bring in new functionality to the website.But too many Plugins can significantly slow your website down by creating too many files, thus increasing load time.

It is recommended that you try to avoid plugins whenever possible. It is not entirely possible to avoid plugins. But there are ways that you can use to reduce the overall count of plugins

I. If there is an easy way around the plugin use it. (for eg. Google analytics plugin. Instead just add the tracking code at the head tag of your website and be done with it.)

II. Review the plugins every 4-6 months.

III. Evaluate all plugins and delete if

1. You no longer use the plugin
2. It’s not doing what it’s supposed to do.
3. It is calling deprecated functions.
4. There are new and improved plugins that work better.

Aside from taking up space, outdated plugins are a security hazard.

4. Optimize JS and CSS

By removing unnecessary line breaks, extra space and so on you will speed up the parsing, downloading and execution. This simple task can cut bytes of data from your page and every little bit counts.

If you are using workflow tools like gulp or grunt, you can add npm packages to minify the files.

You can also use gzip for compression of the files. According to CSS genius Chris Coyier “Gzipping means to find all the repetitive strings and replaces them with pointers to the first instance of that string.”

For the best result you would want to use minifying and gzipping together. However gzipping is done at server level so you have to configure to do it.

Follow this example for gzip configuration: https://css-tricks.com/snippets/htaccess/active-gzip-compression/

 5. Take advantage of Caching

Browsercaching allows to store versions of static resources, a process that quickens page speed tremendously and reduces server lag. It allows the visitor to access the page more quickly since the site no longer has to retrieve each file form the database.

The thing with caching is that in most cases it works only when visitors are repetitive. As such first time visitors are forced to wait for the site to load as the site won’t be cached.

6. Understand Http request.

Websites are mostly slow beacause of too many or too large http requests. When you are understand HTTP requests you can better eliminate them.

There are ways to reduce or eliminate HTTP requests . To see how many requests your page make you can use pingdom.

7. Cut down on external scripts.

The snippets of javascript code you add to your website to add an extra feature or library to your site? These external scripts make HTTP requests everytime a new page loads.

Some external scripts that could be slowing your site down

1. Facebook “like my page” box.
2. Bootstrap brought via CDN
3. Icons like font awesome also brought via cdn
4. External Commenting Systems like Disqus
5. Pop up boxes and similar lead capturing tools.
6. Web analytics service like google analytics.
7. External fonts.

This does not mean you should avoid all of them. Just be aware and try to make less HTTP request.

8. Eliminate Baggage.

Baggage can be many things which we have discussed above (image, plugins, and external scripts)

Some common example of website baggage are :

1. Codes that accumulate on the site like when making quick fixes to the bugs without considering the most productive way to implement the changes.
2. Databases that have become massive particularly in case of e-commerce websites.
3. Too many backup at server level.
4. For wordpress users excessive plugins, themes, saved posts, and massive media libraries.

Tips for limiting baggage

1. Remove spam comments or trackbacks you don’t need
2. Store media files externally prefrebally amazon s3
3. For Wp users: remove older installations of wordpress on your server.
4. For WP users: use plugins like wp-optimize to clean up the database more efficiently.

9. Review your hosting package

When all is said and done and your website is still loading slowly, then you may want to consider a new hosting package. On a normal shared hosting account you might be sharing server space with lots of other companies, which impacts your website’s performance speed, since a lot of other people are using the same server. If shared hosting no longer fulfills your needs then you should consider dedicated hosting. This option allows you alone access to the server, or a VPS (virtual private server)- a physical computer partitioned into multiple servers each running its own operating system.

Tools to measure Website page speed.

Currently there are many tools available on the internet to measure your webpage loading speed. These tools helps in figuring out what you are lacking and which aspect of the page is taking longer to load which in turn is affecting your webpage speed.

Some free major webpage speed measuring tools are listed below

1. Keycdn speed test
2. Google page speed Insights
3. Pingdom
4. GTmatrix
5. Webpage test
6. Varvy Page speed optimization
7. Uptrends
8. Dotcom-monitor
9. PageScoring
10. Yellow Lab Tools
11. Google Chrome Dev Tools
12. Sucuri Load Time tester
13. Pagelocity
14. Yslow
15. PerfTool

The list above are some of the tools available for measuring the page loading speed. The tools listed above are all free to use.

At ads! We go to great lengths to ensure the websites we build are fast and user friendly. We also take great care in making sure the end-user experience is as smooth and intuitive as possible. The things discussed above are also utilized to its fullest potential so that we can deliver the best product to our clients.

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Intel Bug forces computers around the globe to be updated immediately.

On the recent press release by Intel on Jan 3, 2018 they have admitted to a severe design flaw in their CPU architecture. This allows sensitive data, such as password and crypo-keys to be stolen from the memory unencrypted. This massive security vulnerabilities in modern CPUs are forcing a redesign of the kernel software at the heart of all major OS.
The Issues that exists in the CPU itself has been dubbed Meltdown and Spectre by Intel. All operating systems such as MAC, Linux, Android, Windows, Chromebooks and other operating systems all need to protect against it. And, the worst of all this update will negatively effecting your computer’s performance.
Average home users may not have adverse effect by this patch too much though it is recommended to apply the latest update and keep the antivirus programs vigilant, as ever.
So here is the gist of things about the Meltdown and Spectre attacks.

What is it?

This is technically a design flaw in the CPU which allows all the data stored in the kernel to be accessed by unprivileged processors to read data in memory that it should not be able to. In a nutshell this exploit allows access to your operating systems sacrosanct kernel memory because of how the processors handle “speculative execution”, which modern CPUs perform to increase performance. An attacker can exploit these CPU vulnerabilities to expose extremely sensitive data in your protected kernel memory, including passwords, cryptographic keys, personal data, email etc on your PC.
Meltdown is more serious exploit, and the one that operating systems are rushing to fix it. It “breaks the most fundamental isolation between user applications and the operating systems” according to google. This flaw most strongly affects Intel because of the way they handle speculative execution.
Spectre affects both amd and arm processors as well as Intel CPUs which means mobile devices are at risk. It’s harder to exploit than Meltdown, but it is also harder to mitigate” Google says. There may be no hardware solution to spectre, which “tricks other applications into accessing arbitrary locations in their memory”.

How do I know if my PC is at risk?

Short answer: It is. Probably.

Google says “effectively every” Intel processor released since 1995 is vulnerable to Meltdown, regardless of the OS you’re running or whether you have a desktop or laptop. Chips from Intel, AMD, and ARM are susceptible to Spectre attacks, though AMD says its hardware has “near zero” risk because of the way its chip architecture is designed. Intel said Thursday, though, that the patches that it is issuing—via firmware and operating system patches—“render those systems immune from both exploits.” That’s a big claim from Intel, and has yet to be confirmed. You can find a full list of affected Intel processors in this article.
What is the difference between Meltdown and Spectre?
Meltdown breaks the mechanism that keeps applications from accessing arbitrary system memory. Consequently, applications can access system memory. Spectre tricks other applications into accessing arbitrary locations in their memory. Both attacks use side channels to obtain the information from the accessed memory location.

So, what can I do?

Not much besides updating your PC with Meltdown patches issued by operating system makers. Since the issue is such a deeply technical one there isn’t anything users can do to mitigate the potential issue other than wait for a fix to arrive. Definitely make sure you’re running security software in the meantime—advice that Intel also stresses.

When will the fixes be out?

For windows, mac and chromebook users it is already out.
Microsoft pushed out a windows update (KB4054022) protecting against Meltdown on Jan3, 2018 soon after the press release. The release of the update outside of monthly “patch Tuesdays” are rare, underlining the severity of the issues.
Apple did it quietly on their masOS high sierra 10.13.2 released on Dec 6, 2017, according to developer Alex Ionescu. Additional safeguards will be found in macOS 10.13.3, he says. Kernel patches are also available for linux.
Chromebooks received protection in Chrome OS 63 released on Dec 15 2017. Furthermore chrome web browsers itself was updated to include an opt-in fearure called “site isolation” that can help guard against spectre attacks. Although it will take time to be implemented on mobile devices as it can create “functionality and performance issues” in android, and since chrome in iOS is force to useWkWebView, the solutions in that platform must come from Apple itself. Chrome 64 will include more mitigations.
Both Mozilla and Microsoft are taking necessary steps to protect browsers against spectre as well. Edge and internet explorer received an update alongside windows 10.

Want to know more?

Papers published by Intel about Meltdown and Spectre are available here.

What we think about it?

This is a very serious issue that has gone unchecked over the last decade which will have a very serious implications to it. In the race to create faster CPUs Intel has overlooked a fundamental design flaw and let it continue for more than a decade. All processors from Intel manufacturers are now under the microscope and who knows how big the repercussions will be. Intel has said that the patch for the CPUs released in last five years have been rolled out but have not clarified about the older CPUs. No matter the case this will have very serious effect on intel loyalist and those who have been using Intel processors. Until this issue is dealt with it is better to not buy any new CPUs and gadgets as all the software updates are currently only a band aid fix and does not completely remove the issue.

The post Meltdown and Spectre appeared first on ads! digital.

Beyond the press release and hypes created in social media by a handful of cryptocurrencytraders even bankers, scientists and many other financial consultants have very limited knowledge and thus the confusion.

What is Cryptocurrency and How it all began?

A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature. A defining feature of a cryptocurrency, and arguably its most endearing allure, is its organic nature; it is not issued by any central authority, rendering it theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.

Very few people know that cryptocurrencies emerged as the side product to another invention. Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown inventor of bitcoin the first and the most important crypto currency, never intended to invent a currency. In late 2008, Satotshi said he developed “A peer to peer Electronic cash system”.

The most important part of the invention was that he found a way to build a decentralized digital cash system. Many before tried but failed.

How it works?

Basically speaking Bitcoins or cryptocurrencies in general is virtual money you can use to buy and sell things online and it mimics real world limited resource like gold for instance. It is also a crypto currency which means that it’s encrypted in such a way that prevents it from being copied. Now every bitcoin transaction is recorded using something called a Blockchain. It acts like a ledger that is encoded onto bitcoin itself. This prevents people from spending same bitcoin more than once since everyone else on the currency’s  peer to peer network knows that it was just spent.

How to acquire bitcoins?

You can acquire bitcoins or cryptocurrency as a method of payment for goods and sercives, exchange them for a more traditional form of currency, or you can mine(like coal and gold minning) them. YES, MINE!. That’s right like golds,bitcoins and other form of cryptocurrencies are mined by highly powerful computers. Like other commodities that are mined, the more the people that mine the less commodities there are to be found so they become harder to find. As such you can earn bitcoins by solving Cryptologic puzzle(SHA-256 hash or high end mathematical problems) or also known as Hash. As it is cryptocurrency you can earn more by solving the hash. The first machine to solve hash is rewarded by bitcoins. Incase multiple machine solve the hash at the same time, then the network picks one to keep building upon which becomes the longest and the most trusted chain. This is how a blockchain is created and you are hence rewarded with bitcoins or other form of cryptocurrency.

Why it became popular?

One of the characteristics of cryptocurrency that makes it different to conventional money is that it is decentralized. Which means there is no governing body to control the flow of the currency. This means there is no governing body like with the conventional currency.

Reasons for the popularity of cryptocurrency:

1. Decentralized: The bitcoin network isn’t controlled by one central authority. Every machine that mines bitcoin and processes transactions makes up a part of the network, and the machines work together. That means that, in theory, one central authority can’t tinker with monetary policy and cause a meltdown – or simply decide to take people’s bitcoins away from them.
2. It’s easy to set up: Compared to traditional Bank account Bitcoin account can be set up in minutes or even seconds! No questions are asked or no fees are taken.
3. Anonymity:  Users can hold multiple bitcoin addresses, and they aren’t linked to names, addresses, or other personally identifying information.
4. Transperancy: Bitcoin stores details of every single transaction that ever happened in the network in a huge version of a general ledger, called the blockchain. Still there are ways people can make it more opaque on Bitcoin network not using the same bitcoin addresses consistently, and not transferring lots of bitcoin to a single address.
5. Transaction fees are miniscule: May be themost important part. International transfers cost decent sum of money, but Bitcoin doesn’t.
6. Fast: We can send money anywhere and it will arrive minutes later, as soon as the bitcoin network processes the payment.
7. Broad applications: The more days passing by, people are getting educated about bitcoins. Now different governments US, Australia, Uk and even Un is thinking of using bitcoin and implement it in many government works. Many top companies like Delitte, Accenture, Wipro, HSBC have already either set up their lab or started extensive research on this.
8. Hedge against risk: As the currency value is constantly degrading and people are facing challenges to keep up with this volatile economy, more often they are finding it as a hedge / security against the currency devaluation.Most experts have pointed towards fears in China and Asia that the yuan could depreciate as reasons for increased investment in bitcoin.

Benefits and Drawbacks

The advantages of digital currency is a plethora. Not only is it good for the business or the business owner but the buyer themselves. Of course if you purchased a specific crypto and it has shot up in price, you’re buying using pennies on the dollar. In the long term, it definitely pays off. That is definitely one of the benefits of bitcoin.

1. Easy access – Cryptocurrency is readily available to the general public. Almost anyone can make use of it. It is a decentralized operation and investors from all over the world have easy access to them. You can find various projects trying to raise funds through cryptocurrency. Almost anyone that can make online fund transfers can become part of such projects.
2. Quick and easy payments – Making payments using cryptocurrency is very easy. You can do it in just a matter of a few seconds. It is very fast because you don’t require to feed many details, you don’t even need to enter your credit/debit card details. All you need is the address of the wallet of the person or enterprise to whom you wish to make the payment too. The amount shall credit to the receiver within few seconds to a few minutes depending on the crypto. The ease of transfer and the low transaction fees makes it very desirable.
3. Costs less – Transferring money by using any other online forum or bank gateway is expensive as they levy considerable fees for the transaction. Credit card processing companies charge hefty fees. But it is not the case with cryptocurrency as the costs are nil or negligible. With credit cards or debit cards, the seller is the one paying a fee but for crypto’s, it is the buyer paying the small fee.
4. Private – You don’t need to share your identity or whereabouts or the details of the transactions made between you and the beneficiary. No information required to share with the government and the bank regarding the deal. It is truly decentralized.
5. Highly secured – All your transactions will be secure as it is using NSA created cryptography. It is next to impossible for any person other than the owner of the wallet to make any payment from the wallet, unless they were hacked which there are many ways to protect yourself from.
6. Remain anonymous – Some coins can help you stay anonymous but contrary to popular belief, not all of them can. Bitcoin is pseudonymous which means people won’t know exactly who you are on the blockchain but they can get some information from it.
7. Your detailsare safe – Nobody can steal your personal information from merchants, which ensures the privacy of your sensitive data. By creating a proxy ID, you can make sure that no one knows anything about you.
8. No chargebacks – Once you made the payment, you cannot chargeback. This considerably depletes the chances of a fraud. Once the transfer has completed, it cannot reverse. Nobody can file chargeback like you can on credit cards. It has it’s cons but can be an advantage also.
9. No third party – You are the master of your money. You can keep it in your wallet and use it as per your wishes. There is no third party involved like a bank on whom you need to trust.
10. No boundaries – When you talk about transactions using cryptocurrencies then there are no limits. You may be in a different part of the world and the receiver might be some other hemisphere, you can still transfer the amount without any hassle. The inter-country transaction is extremely easy with cryptocurrency because its function is not under the control of any central bank.

All the advantages do not mean that there are no risks involved in investing in cryptocurrencies. Just like anything else financially, they are not perfect and there are drawbacks of Bitcoin. Here we will discuss the disadvantages of cryptocurrencies:

1. Difficult to understand – Cryptocurrencies are relatively new and come with a learning curve. People end up investing without proper knowledge and lose money to something they did not learn about.
2. Lack of knowledge – People are not aware of how to use cryptocurrency and hence open themselves to hacker. The technology is somewhat complex and therefore one needs to be mindful of it before investing.
3. Not accepted widely – Not many websites and companies accept digital currencies yet. Very few countries have legalized the use of cryptocurrencies. It makes it impractical for everyday use. Due to lack of acceptance, before buying or investing online or offline, you need to make sure that it’s accepted at that place where you want to use it. Although it is slowly getting the acceptance around the world, it will take time to take the idea entirely out of the shadows.
4. Can lose your wallet – There is a possibility of losing your wallet. If you have stored the money in the form of digital currency on your phone or computer, you better remember your password and not lose those devices. Losing your coins means you won’t be able to retrieve it, even with the help of legal assistance so that is just one of Bitcoins flaws.
5. No way to reverse the payment – If you mistakenly pay someone by using cryptocurrency, then there is no way to get a refund of the amount paid. All you can do is to ask the person for a refund and if your request is turned down, then just forget about the money.
6. Uncertainty – Since cryptocurrencies are so new, they are also very volatile. This is one of the main reasons mass adoption is taking longer than it should. Many corporations don’t want to deal with a form of money that is going to go through huge swings in volatility.

Why Governments hate it?

In traditional payment system a middleman, an intermediary is necessary to settle transaction. This is someone trusted and it is usually the banks. More often than not we rely on banks to in monopolistic environment to create innovations in financial sectors since they have access within the system to clear money. These trusts are necessary to ensure transactions successfully go through. Unfortunately in the Fiat Currency world this privilege also carries exorbitant transaction fees.
When you deposit money at a traditional bank you are no longer own the money, the bank does. There are lot of transactions happening in the background where banks are essentially spending your money to earn more for themselves, and charge you for that “privilege”. There’s layers upon layers of complexity where people do not realize there is being spent to benefit those financial institutions alone.
Digital currencies had always been open to risk of being spent twice because it consist of a digital file that can be duplicated or falsified. This is known as double spending problem.
Where all else failed bitcoin’s whitepaper was the first to provide an extra ordinary solution to this double spending problem by outlining a clever method so all transactions, without exception is included in a publicly verifiable transaction log called the blockchain. The result was a decentralized system where you could control your funds and know what was going on. If I transfer bitcoins from my phone to yours there is no middleman in the process which means no exuberant transaction fees.
Now a days banks no longer worry about other banks being their competitor. What they do worry about is the “Bank of One” – the next gen banking system that is decentralized and resident on a smart phone. A digital asset that is not issued by the banks or the government. As such, banks underlying fear of bitcoins boils down to this irrefutable truth: They fear they can be replaced. Cryptocurrencies can potentially make central banks obsolete.
When Bitcoins/Cryptocurrency was first introduced governments and banks ignored it. In the following years they laughed and derided it: “A fool and its money are soon parted”. We are now at that stage where they are fighting it. In this world where big banks run the show governments will soon be pressurized into banning the usage of cryptocurrencies overall. Countries with authoritarian governments like China, India, Korea and many other south Asian counties have already begun the process of banning the overall usage of bitcoins. Soon the US and other small European countries will also ban the usage of the bitcoins under pretext that it is easier to fund terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and other taboos of society.

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