Yearly Archives: 2018

A report by the Dubai Technology Entrepreneurship Campus (Dtec), a wholly owned technology hub by Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority (DSOA), prepared in collaboration with ArabNet and startAD, an innovation and entrepreneurship platform anchored at New York University Abu Dhabi and powered by Tamkeen, revealed that the UAE ranks first in the region in terms of enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) applications with an annual growth rate of 33.5 percent.

Unveiled at the Dtec Forum for Emerging Technology Companies at Dtec in Dubai Silicon Oasis, the Artificial Intelligence Adoption in Enterprise 2018 report compares levels of adoption of AI solutions among companies in the region and the world. The document also outlines strategies and mechanisms for implementing AI solutions at the institutional level, in addition to highlighting internal and external incentives that encourage companies to adopt these solutions.

The report quotes PwC’s 2017 forecasts that the contribution of AI to the global economy will increase to US$15.7 trillion by 2030, and that AI will contribute US$96 billion to (13.6 percent) to the UAE GDP by 2030.

While the report predicts that AI adoption will account for 45 percent of the world economy’s total gains by 2030, the UAE ranks first in the Arab world in terms of expected annual growth of AI contribution to the economy at 33.5 percent, followed by Saudi Arabia at 31.3 percent, the rest of the GCC region at 28.8 percent, and Egypt at 25.5 percent.

The report identifies multiple solutions AI can offer to companies, including operational applications, automation of robotic operations, reengineering of business processes, blockchain, big data analysis for marketing, customer care and data management, as well as using neural programming in talent search.
Speaking on the findings, Shahla Ahmed Abdul Razak, Deputy CEO DSOA, said: “The results of the report reiterate our country’s continued success in implementing the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence. His Excellency Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of Artificial Intelligence, highlighted the strategy’s latest developments during the annual meetings of the UAE government in November 2018.”

She added: “As a major tech campus for startups in the heart of Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dtec is keen to collaborate with pioneering research institutions and incubators, such as startAD, to produce accurate data analysis reports and contribute to enabling technology entrepreneurship in Dubai and the wider UAE. To achieve these priorities, we can leverage the flexible regulatory frameworks and comprehensive strategies established by the UAE leadership to support entrepreneurs, emerging businesses, and SMEs, and attract local and foreign direct investments to fund innovative ideas in emerging sectors, including AI and smart city applications.”

For his part, Ramesh Jagannathan, Managing Director of startAD, said: “AI today plays a significant role in enhancing the productive capacity of countries and boosting the global GDP. To maximize its benefits, countries need to adopt AI policies across diverse sectors.”
He added: “The UAE continues to rank high in several regional and global indicators, including competitiveness, innovation, and ease of doing business, owing to its advanced AI policy that paves the way for the implementation of various smart government components. Leading by example, the corporations in the UAE are actively preparing to leverage the strengths of AI to build defensible value for the future”.

Omar Christidis, Arabnet CEO and Founder said, “AI is disrupting and redefining every industry – from the pricing of risk and interest rates in the finance industry, to predictive diagnosis in healthcare. Overall, AI can support process automation, personalization, and improving customer experience – and organizations that implement it effectively will be able to gain a competitive edge over their peers and deliver impact to their bottom line.”

The report lists three priority areas for enterprise adoption of AI solutions – AI for operation enhancement, AI for customer service enhancement, and AI for growth strategy support.

The document identifies the main factors that can have a positive or negative effect on the adoption of AI applications among companies and institutions, such as cost-benefit ratio, key trends that dominate the field, and budget availability.

Furthermore, the report outlines the concerns of entities regarding AI, primarily the risk of security breach, data leaks, privacy threats, job replacement, lack of knowledge required by suppliers, and the absence of regulatory frameworks in many countries. The report calls on companies specializing in AI to dispel these fears.

The document defines three types of AI. The first, specialized AI, comprises solutions such as virtual assistants – Siri and Alexa, digital customer service, purchase options outlook, self-driving vehicles, and automatic fraud monitoring. The second, advanced AI, enables machines to make decisions without training, learning, or pre-programming, and has not been achieved yet. Third, Super AI, is expected to surpass the intelligence of the human brain. At present, it also exists only in the minds of scientists and researchers.

In addition, the report reviews AI strategies for several institutions and companies in key sectors, such as telecommunications, financial services, automotive industry, and foodstuffs.

The methodology of the report involved qualitative research, analysis of the experience of entities active in the field of AI based on internal and external factors, and in-depth personal interviews with executives in key departments related to AI in those entities.

Sitefinity CMS helps organizations engage and retain customers throughout their entire lifecycle using relevant and meaningful content. The platform makes it easier for content managers to create content faster and manage it more efficiently using the drag-and-drop interface. It allows marketers to do most of the content creation and editing work without requiring any technical assistance.

Digital Experience Management features help increase conversions and generate more leads by delivering personalized experiences. A/B testing and contextual analysis makes it easier for digital marketers to analyze and optimize customer experiences.

Digital Commerce helps manage price lists, product catalogs, checkout process and shopping carts with ease and connects businesses with cloud services for real-time updates.

Sitefinity offers some great features and advantages to website developers and website owners.

Features:
• Customer engagement, conversion and retention
• Content creation and management
• Drag-and-drop editing
• Customer experience management
• 1:1 conversations
• Personalized experiences
• A/B testing
• Contextual analysis
• Digital ecommerce
• E-store management
• Real-time shipping and tax rates
• Multi-channel digital experiences
• Enterprise-level deployment
• Multi-site/location support
• Digital Experience Cloud
• Unified marketing command center
• Customer journey database
• Customer 360-degree view
• Customer journey analysis
• Marketing attribution reports
• Lead scoring
• Persona profiling
• Customer journey optimization
• Step-by-step recommendations
• Customer journey personalization
• Predictive analysis

Advantages:
• Sitefinity’s ease of use allows users to create and edit pages with little HTML/CSS knowledge. Creating rich, vibrant content is easy with Sitefinity’s intuitive ‘drag & drop’ interface.
• Sitefinity supports mobile platforms. For visitors on the go, Sitefinity allows you to adapt your current website to any device with Responsive Design.
• Create attention-grabbing emails that blend seamlessly with your website’s existing styling by using Sitefinity’s built-in email designer.
• Multi-Channel Content Syndication allows you to distribute your content (blogs, news, events) through enhances RSS and Atom Syndication.
• Sitefinity creates SEO-friendly URL’s for each and every page. It also allows you to manage all meta-data, warranting higher page ranking.
• Sitefinity is based on standard Microsoft .NET technologies and is easy to configure and implement.
• Sitefinity’s backend offers Site Synchronization and granular permissions.
• Sitefinity erases the lines that separate content from products by fully integrating ecommerce. It supports multiple payment providers, multi- language capability, marketing promotions and coupon management.

When you invest in Sitefinity, you can be sure that no matter how large your business grows over the years and what customers expect from your site, you can always manage your business and keep consumers satisfied.

The medical industry is no more called ‘Healthcare’, rather is known as ‘Healthtech’ after having a spin by the technological advancements over the years.

Logically, it’s not humanly possible for medical professionals to keep up with ever-growing heaps of new data related to health conditions, medical diagnosis, and the latest genetic trends. So, is there any solution?

Yes. Enter the world of AI and your problems will be solved at breakneck speed.

The digital wave of Artificial Intelligence brings along many benefits, from delivering medical aid at doorsteps to making a doctor’s life a tad bit easy,  offering feature-rich AI-based applications that change the normal routine.

AI and ML are leading in the race of digital developments where the techniques are highly capable to contribute both in healthcare services as well as devices.

Tech progressions are never ceasing, every day bringing something unusual and unexpected. This calls for all business types to learn AI with Best Artificial Intelligence Certification Training Course to stay ahead in the competition to develop out of the box smart tools and techniques .

Did You Know?

[Artificial Intelligence opens new windows for the Healthcare industry to expand AI Health market’s growth from $600 million to $6 billion by touching 2021.]

How AI is Transforming the Healthcare Industry?

AI has given many proven examples of its existence industry-wide, where it has also played the role of a game changer in healthcare.

With our eyebrow-raising doubts regarding AI replacing human jobs, many assert that whether AI doctors will replace human physicians too?

By now we can be rest assure that physicians might not be replaced by machines, instead, AI can assist doctors in making better clinical decisions and judgment when compared with humans.

The AI wave of advancements augments the expertise of trained clinicians where its robust algorithms extensively eliminate the possibility of errors in diagnosis.

Did You Know?

[A report by Frost and Sullivan speaks, by 2021 the healthcare market of AI is likely to witness an annual growth rate of 40%, thereby, reducing treatment costs by half and changing the healthcare outcomes by 30-40%.]

The rapid progressions of big data analytics and the growing availability of medical data have made the advent of AI applications in healthcare a big success.The concept, Artificial Intelligence, merely aims to mimic human cognitive functions by making the impossible possible. The popular AI techniques of machine learning, natural language processing, and modern deep learning have a great potential to sort structured and unstructured data.

AI along with its clever programs and alorithms sheerly contribute in key areas of early detection and diagnosis, treatment, as well as outcome prediction and prognosis evaluation.  

Remarkable Medical Evolutions Brought up by Artificial Intelligence

E-Health Records (EHR)

By crossing all the hurdles like user burnout, cognitive overload, heavy documentation, AI brought a transition in the medical provisions by automating such tasks and making the clinical documentation smooth and easy to go.

As data retrieval is a powerful aspect of artificial intelligence, the records and activities handled effectively by machines gives doctors and patients both, an ease to rely on the sensitive information (stored in Cloud).

Apart from storage and retrieval, the technique also handles some routine tasks by identifying user patterns, say, while running low with the medication, AI tools send an auto-generated request for medicine refill, promptly.

Virtual Heath Assistance

Before the arrival of the revolutionary phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence and its forms, did you ever hear the terms called Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) and Medical Virtual Assistant (MVA)?

I didn’t. But surprisingly, now people aren’t only familiar with these, instead, are making good use of such personal assistants who help them manage their health goals more like a human.

Some of their duties involve:

• Remind patients of their medication on time
• Suggest diet plans and eating habits keeping restrictions
• Enable virtual interaction with physicians and doctors
• Provide suggestions at the time of common ailments
• Give timely reminders of medical bookings and appointments

The overlords of the globe- Microsoft, Amazon, IBM already possess smart and intelligent conversational AI systems those can respond to voice/text-based queries of an individual. Therefore, this technology can be implemented in healthcare too which can further improve patient engagement and self-management skills.

Proactive Medical Care

Unlikely the earlier trend of reactive care, Artificial Intelligence transforms the rules by offering proactive care to the masses by its highly effective apps and techniques.

Where in the traditional era, the hierarchy followed was like- a person going to the doctor with specified symptoms, first undergoes few assessments and tests and then finally gets to know the disease he is suffering from.

The process used to be quite long, which might even cause further problems to the sufferer, however, in the digital era, the care provided by artificial intelligence is more stereotype.

The AI care, studies the complete patient history highlighting the high-risk markers instantly, suggesting the best cure to them, thus,  minimizing the alarming conditions and threats via close monitoring.

AI-enabled apps provide you with the primary healthcare features which give its users great operating experience, acting humanly:

• Personalized medication
• Predictive analysis and care
• Better diagnosis
• Advanced treatment plans
• Valuable suggestions
• And much more…

Medical Imaging Diagnostics

Do you think that the X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, all done on a human body give foolproof results of the examinations of a disease? If yes, then why doctors relied on supplement ways of biopsies?

Only because these old-school methods only give glimpses of the inner workings of the body where today AI revamps all these loopholes of scanning by enabling intelligence in the radiology images.

Unlikely, the previous assessment techniques, the modern pieces of equipment deliver accurate and semantic results allowing doctors and pathologists to take unanimous decisions on the mode of treatment with the least probability of being wrong.

Radiologists today, zoom into the problems which human eye can’t judge by scanning and detecting the infections or tumors or bleeds quite deeply.

Moreover, surgeons are also given an upper edge while performing surgeries when they get useful assistance from human-like machines on accessing the surgical area.

When everything that revolves around you is changing and spinning at a great pace, why not artificial intelligence make an intervention in the health of an individual enhancing the life comfort and addressing all the longevity issues coming across?

Its not the end! Artificial intelligence has way more potential to drive you crazy with its eccentric traits to explore many facets of mankind, thereby shaping the world in a technical way.

Undoubtedly, the concept then and now, is a breakthrough that revolutionizes different industry spheres and norms, working on the ongoing discoveries, aiming to serve the humankind who actually brought it into the existence.

The internet is made up of thousands of public and private networks around the world. And since it came to life in 1984, more than 4.7 zettabytes of IP traffic have flowed across it. That’s the same as all the movies ever made crossing global IP networks in less than a minute.

Yet the new Visual Networking Index (VNI) by Cisco predicts that is just the beginning. By 2022, more IP traffic will cross global networks than in all prior ‘internet years’ combined up to the end of 2016. In other words, more traffic will be created in 2022 than in the 32 years since the internet started. Where will that traffic come from? All of us, our machines and the way we use the internet. By 2022, 60 percent of the global population will be internet users. More than 28 billion devices and connections will be online. And video will make up 82 percent of all IP traffic.

“The size and complexity of the internet continues to grow in ways that many could not have imagined. Since we first started the VNI Forecast in 2005, traffic has increased 56-fold, amassing a 36 percent CAGR with more people, devices and applications accessing IP networks,” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider Business, Cisco. “Global service providers are focused on transforming their networks to better manage and route traffic, while delivering premium experiences. Our ongoing research helps us gain and share valuable insights into technology and architectural transitions our customers must make to succeed.”

Key predictions for 2022

Cisco’s VNI looks at the impact that users, devices and other trends will have on global IP networks over a five-year period. From 2017 to 2022, Cisco predicts:

Global IP traffic will more than triple
Global IP traffic is expected to reach 396 exabytes per month by 2022, up from 122 exabytes per month in 2017. That’s 4.8 zettabytes of traffic per year by 2022.
By 2022, the busiest hour of internet traffic will be six times more active than the average. Busy hour internet traffic will grow by nearly five times (37 percent CAGR) from 2017 to 2022, reaching 7.2 petabytes1per second by 2022. In comparison, average internet traffic will grow by nearly four times (30 percent CAGR) over the same period to reach 1 petabyte by 2022.
1 A petabyte is equal to 1,000 terabytes or one million gigabytes.

Global internet users will make up 60 percent of the world’s population
There will be 4.8 billion internet users by 2022. That’s up from 3.4 billion in 2017 or 45 percent of the world’s population.
Global networked devices and connections will reach 28.5 billion
By 2022, there will be 28.5 billion fixed and mobile personal devices and connections, up from 18 billion in 2017—or 3.6 networked devices/connections per person, from 2.4 per person.
More than half of all devices and connections will be machine-to-machine by 2022, up from 34 percent in 2017. That’s 14.6 billion connections from smart speakers, fixtures, devices and everything else, up from 6.1 billion.
Global broadband, Wi-Fi and mobile speeds will double or more
Average global fixed broadband speeds will nearly double from 39.0 Mbps to 75.4 Mbps.
Average global Wi-Fi connection speeds will more than double from 24.4 Mbps to 54.0 Mbps.
Average global mobile connection speeds will more than triple from 8.7 Mbps to 28.5 Mbps.
Video, gaming and multimedia will make up more than 85 percent of all traffic
IP video traffic will quadruple by 2022. As a result, it will make up an even larger percentage of total IP traffic than before—up to 82 percent from 75 percent.
Gaming traffic is expected to grow nine-fold from 2017 to 2022. It will represent four percent of overall IP traffic in 2022.
Virtual and augmented reality traffic will skyrocket as more consumers and businesses use the technologies. By 2022, virtual and augmented reality traffic will reach 4.02 exabytes/month, up from 0.33 exabytes/month in 2017.
Regional IP traffic growth details (2017 – 2022)

APAC: 173 exabytes/month by 2022, 32 percent CAGR, four-times growth
North America: 108 exabytes/month by 2022, 21 percent CAGR, three-times growth
Western Europe: 50 exabytes/month 2022, 22 percent CAGR, three-times growth
Central & Eastern Europe: 25 exabytes/month by 2022, 26 percent CAGR, three-times growth
Middle East and Africa: 21 exabytes/month by 2022, 41 percent CAGR, six-times growth
Latin America: 19 exabytes/month by 2022, 21 percent CAGR, three-times growth
Cisco Complete VNI Forecast
The Cisco Complete VNI™ Forecast includes global, regional, and country-level projections and trends associated with fixed and mobile networks. The full report includes additional information and analysis on IoT by industry vertical, IPv6 adoption, traffic growth by application, traffic patterns, cord cutting implications, Wi-Fi hotspots, broadband network performance and network security issues.

Google once experienced a 20% drop in traffic because of an extra .5 seconds in load time

The paradigm has shifted. According to Sharad Agarwal, CEO of Cyber Gear “It is no more about ‘Survival of the Fittest’. It is about ‘Survival of the Fastest’.”

Google now has a ‘Mobile First’ policy in place. One of the websites ranking criteria is ‘Download Speed’. Google even provides the tools to check your web site speed. It is at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

But Google does not help you increase the speed of your site. It simply points you in the right direction. To achieve ‘5G like’ speed (5G is 90 times faster than 4G!), you need the help of a professional company to recode, minimize HTTP requests, enable browser caching, compress graphics and optimize CSS delivery. Cyber Gear can assist you in delivering the fastest mobile experience so that you stay ahead of your competitors:

1. Coding is key

If you have a ‘responsive’ site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.

2. UX/UI are important

A fast site is a good user experience (UX), and how it looks, senses, and reacts (UI) leads to higher conversions.

3. Every second counts

According to industry benchmark test, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. Check your ‘bounce’ rate in Google Analytics!

4. Time to first byte

TTFB, is the amount of time a browser has to wait before getting its first byte of data from the server. Google recommends a TTFB of less than 200 milliseconds.

5. Server speed matters

For Googlebot, a speedy site is a sign of healthy servers, so it can get more content over the same number of connections.

6. ‘Mobile First’ principle

Research shows that 30% of all online shopping purchases happen on mobile phones. And 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with site performance say they’re less likely to purchase from the same site again.

Here is the secret sauce.

7. Keep It Simple

Documents published on the web need to be kept small, be linked efficiently and contain only the data and graphics that they require. ‘Content’ and ‘Context’ are still primary.

Creativity above all else will catapult you into success. There are millions of Instagram accounts so it is vital to stand out from the crowd. McDonald’s is a great example of clever tinkering. The fast food chain wanted to raise awareness in Poland for its “I crave a Mac” campaign and place itself at the forefront of the minds of millennials seeking to satisfy their hunger. The instagram account (@mamsmakanamaka) started to splice their menu items into everyday objects to summon up the McDonald’s brand image without ever using the logo. This is a powerful way of promoting the brand without the use of iconic imagery like the Golden Arches or Ronald McDonald. Instagram is primarily a visual medium and a picture supposedly paints a thousand words so get out there and do just that.

Consider all of the tools at your disposal. The only clickable link is in your Bio section so ensure that it leads somewhere interesting. Don’t simply link to the corporate website. That’s boring and played out. Let your potential customers know about a special event or tell them how they could save money on their purchases. Better yet, give them a peek of the behind-the-scenes. People are naturally curious so tell them what they want to know. Instagram Stories is a great aspect of the platform that allows for a complete day to be experienced within bite-sized intervals. If your business has interesting product sketches or ideas up on a whiteboard, share it. Show them the production and distribution process of your goods or how an employee spends a typical workday.

Lastly, I would say that you should reward your Instagram followers every once in a while. After all, they are following your company because they have some sort of investment in the brand. Reward your loyal followers with content that is exclusive. Make sure they’re among the first to be in the know about new products and events. Come up with a teaser image that can generate anticipation for your upcoming releases or store openings. This kind of preview makes your Instagram followers feel special and keeps them coming back for more insider information.

Sharad Agarwal

The Growth Of The E-commerce Industry As A Result Of Social Media
With the growth of social media, the connectivity and communication that we experience have improved on a significant level. Social media platforms have become so popular that it has become the norm to be on at least one of them to stay in touch. Everyone who uses the internet either uses social media or gets some form of information from it, which is why it had become such a widespread medium. For industries and businesses, the potential for growth that they have witnessed as a result of this is phenomenal. Brands are now able to connect with people from all over the world and partake in global expansion without even leaving their home country. The opportunities in this regard are endless, which is why social media has come up as such a valuable opportunity in today’s society.

The E-commerce industry, in particular, is one that has greatly benefitted from the improvements to social media over the past few years. Because this industry was already functioning through the internet, the evolution of social media only supplemented these brands and companies. Here are some of the ways in which social media has helped the growth companies within the E-commerce industry

Larger Customer Base

One of the first ways in which the e-commerce industry saw an incredible boom was concerning their customers and their potential audiences. Before the dawn of social media, ordinary people would use the internet only for things like checking their email, finding information or to shop from an online store. Logging into the web just to keep up to date with your friends wasn’t exactly a norm, which is what sometimes limited the exposure that brands received. With social media, however, the amount of time that people spend on the internet increased significantly, and people were logging on just to check up on the happenings on these popular sites. As a result of increased internet usage, the number of people who found it convenient to shop online also started increasing. They began to build trust in virtual sources and started sheddings the opinions that were previously held about online shopping.

Globalized Expansion

One of the key reasons why social media sites were developed was with the intention of helping people connect, regardless of which part of the globe they lived in. People now had opportunities to form lasting connections regardless of geographic and linguistic barriers. Because of this, brands were also able to achieve the global expansion that would have otherwise been difficult. In the 1980s for example, if a store wanted to sell their clothing to people in another country, they would have to conduct manual market research, set up a store in a particular location and pay for the cost of transportation of goods. Smaller companies would find it a lot harder to reach those audiences, even if there was an incredible amount of potential in them. Today, those hurdles have been reduced. Online stores can have just one site from which people around the world can conveniently browse as they like. The cost of expanding to another country has significantly reduced, and globalized economies are now experiencing a steady rise.

Influencing Purchases

One of the biggest things that social media has brought forward for brands is the ability to influence customers and their buying patterns. Word of mouth can be a powerful tool, and when coming from someone who is well regarded in the community, brands can expect to see a sudden alteration in the products that people buy. ASOS is one shining example of this. The brand, which had been in operation since 2000 had been seeing a constant drop in their sales over time. The brand needed a few years to get back into the consumer market and decided to enlist the help of social media influencers. As soon as Instagram and Snapchat started to become more popular, the brand partnered up with a few notable fashion icons and social media starts to help them promote their clothing. The brand then started seeing an incredible boost in their sales. By partnering up with well-known influencers, the brand was able to get the attention of those who followed these accounts, thereby influencing their decisions to purchase from the brand.

Better Advertising

Good advertising has always been the best way in which a brand can reach better audiences, and with social media, the potential that brands have in this regard is enormous. One of the reasons for this is the targeted nature of ads on social media. In the past, brands would have to rely on billboard spaces and magazine prints to reach audiences. Even in these situations, the density of potential customers would be far less than what a brand would ideally want. With social media, brands were able to reach the exact people that they needed, and who would be potentially interested in buying their products. Social media advertising is also supplemented by the availability of apps and tools that make this entire process significantly easier. The presence that a brand has to the relevant market is also something that is incredibly beneficial for the overall sales that it experiences. Brands who are targeted to the right audiences can have a stronger presence to those who matter, thereby cementing their position within their particular category. This presence can also enable people to visit the site of the brand easily and engage in the products that it has to offer.

Overall, social media has proven to be an invaluable tool to brands across the world, enabling them to reach avenues that they couldn’t before.

Imagine web design as a human body. First, there are the bones, which represent the code – this gives it structure. Next the organs, which represent UX design, to ensure everything functions inside. Finally, we have UI design, which represents the cosmetics of the body – how it looks, senses, and reacts.

The web design and development process starts with UX. At Cyber Gear, user experience design is a human-first way of designing websites. It is the process of enhancing patient satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability and the joyful experience provided in the interaction between the patient and the website.

This involves the following steps:
• User research
• Interaction design
• Site architecture
• Wireframing
• Scenarios
• Prototyping

UI involves translating the research, content, and layout into an attractive and responsive experience that guides users. According to Cyber Gear, the overall presentation, brand design, typography and visually guiding nature and design of the site will enhance this experience.

In this case it involves the careful selection and implementation of the following:
• Visual Design
• Colours
• Graphical User Interface
• Layouts
• Typography

Good UX and UI blend together seamlessly so that the website in its final form matches the user’s needs and delivers the expected results.

Are you trying to buy or rent a textbook for a college course? Maybe you want to sell a textbook you’ve finished using to get some spending money or money for other school supplies. In any of those scenarios, it’s important to double-check the ISBN on the book. Discover what an ISBN is and why it’s important to double-check them on your textbooks.

What is an ISBN?

An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is given to every book as a way to identify it. It’s the equivalent of a fingerprint for a book. In short, no two books have the same ISBN. For many years, the ISBN consisted of ten numbers. But, since January of 2007, an ISBN has 13 numbers. So, counting the numbers in the ISBN of a book can tell you if it was published before January of 2007.

Where is the ISBN on a Book?

The ISBN of a textbook is located on the back cover near the bar code. Sometimes used textbooks have other stickers on them that have accumulated over the years. Peeling off the stickers and checking the actual back cover of the book will reveal the book’s true ISBN. If there’s no ISBN on the back cover of a book, the next place to check is the copyright page.

Reasons to Double-Check the ISBN on a Book

Ensure It’s the Right Edition of the Book

Some textbooks have several editions. Sometimes authors of textbooks update information and add material resulting in a new edition of the textbook. Or, a new author may be added to the list of authors after adding more material to the textbook. Looking at the ISBN tells you exactly what edition you have. You want to buy or rent the edition being used by the professor in your course. This can make a lot of difference because if you get an older edition of a textbook, you may not have all of the material you need to have success in the class.

Get an Accurate Price on the Book

Double-checking the ISBN on a book can help you determine what it’s worth when you try to sell it. The price is connected with the edition of the book along with other information about it. If you want to see if you can sell your textbooks at BooksRun, then simply enter the ISBN into the search bar. You’ll be able to find out if your textbook is being purchased by BooksRun or if you have one that’s not being bought back at this time.

Make Sure the Author and Title Match Up

Some textbooks have similar titles. If you are unsure of the author of a book and only remember part of a title, you can check the ISBN to get the title and author’s name connected with the book that bears that number. Titles and author names can get confusing, but the ISBN reveals definitive information about that written work.

Avoid the Hassle of Exchanging or Returning a Textbook

If you do mistakenly rent or buy a textbook without double-checking the ISBN, you may have to return it or exchange it for the book required by your professor. This can be a hassle, especially if you are shopping for all of your books at once for a full schedule of classes. Not surprisingly, you want to cross that task off your to-do list and move onto the next to prepare for your classes. Furthermore, if you realize you have the wrong textbook for a course after the course begins, you may get behind on your work because you don’t have the correct textbook.

Lastly, double-checking the ISBN of a textbook is a fail-safe way of getting the exact book you need for a class. Plus, if you’re planning on selling your textbooks, checking the ISBN can tell you what price to expect to get for the book. You may be planning on using the money you get from selling your textbooks to buy or rent next semester’s books. If so, then knowing the prices ahead of time can help you map out your textbook budget for upcoming classes.