So you spent the last year creating your book/course/SAAS/app/web-app/game, released it to the world and… crickets.

You, my friend, are not alone. I’ve been there, many people I know have been there, it doesn’t feel great does it?

However don’t despair, your work has only just begun. You may have spent a year (or more) creating your product, now you need to enter the shadowy world of sales…

What you need now is a sales funnel.

What is a sales funnel?

Simply put, a sales funnel is a process that turns prospects into paying customers. It’s called a funnel because if you draw the process…

Have you considered Virtual Reality (VR) training for your workplace? There are considerable benefits to this kind of training, and despite what you might think, you don’t need to be tech-oriented to undertake VR training — it’s more accessible than you might realise!

Let’s dive straight in and explore the benefits of remote training that you might not know about (or even have considered!).

Faster, better learning

Participants in VR training tend to pick up the concepts of the training faster, and retain knowledge at a much improved rate than with traditional training methods. So why is this?

It’s all to do with…

When you hear Virtual Reality (VR), does your mind instantly jump to gaming? If it does, that’s perfectly normal — it’s probably the most publicised type of VR use in the media!

However, VR has a number of other uses, and adoption and application is increasing all of the time — in business, education and personal life. Let’s take a look at five VR uses you might not know about (apart from gaming, of course!).

Commerce

VR has been used in many areas of commerce to great success, and although technology has been being trialled in this sector for some time…

Back to Front?

Must admit I like to keep things simple. I want my back-end code to look similar to my front-end code. That means using modern javascript (ES6+) both client side and on the server. I also want to handle dependencies the same way, i.e. not include them in my repo and import them easily. On the server side that’s now possible with npm and ES module support in node.js. On the client side that’s now possible with npm, ES module support in the browser and snowpack!

The Server

So let’s look at what we can do on the server thanks to node.js …

Standalone is the Way Ahead

At the time of this post the Oculus Quest 2 has been available for just over a month. Its general release was on October 13th 2020, we picked two up on the release date and have been using them on a daily basis ever since.

Being a standalone device, the Oculus Quest 2 is ready to go right out of the box. With VR headsets that we had used in the past like the HTV Vive, this just wasn’t the case. With the HTC Vive, a non-standalone headset, a separate computer was needed to plug the headset into. Additionally, for…

A minimum viable product, or MVP, is a key part of the Lean Startup Methodology. The idea is that you build an MVP, measure its level of success, learn from this and amend the MVP based on these learnings.

This is the build-measure-learn feedback loop.

OK, but what IS an MVP?

An MVP is the very least of your product that is capable of delivering your core value proposition to early adopters.

Its purpose is to answer the question:

Should this product be built?

The MVP should be solving a problem that your users are having. …

Sometimes you just want the very basics to get you going. Flask and docker are a great combination for creating web applications and API’s. This tutorial will get you up and running in the quickest time possible.

Install Docker

This is as simple as going to: https://www.docker.com/get-started, downloading and running the installer for your system.

One Folder, Three (eventually Four) Files

Open up a terminal window and create a folder for your project:

$ mkdir flask-docker
$ cd flask-docker

In your favourite editor create three files (app.py, Dockerfile & requirements.txt) in this folder:

and

Now in the terminal type:

$ docker image build -t flask-docker…

Sometimes you just want to dip your toe into a potentially deep and complex subject. Maybe you only have 10 minutes to spare and you want to get something up and running quickly.

In 10 minutes time you will be able to say:

‘Oh yes, I’ve used Docker with Python’.

Install Docker

This is as simple as going to: https://www.docker.com/get-started, downloading and running the installer for your system.

One Folder, Two Files

Open up a terminal window and create a folder for your project:

$ mkdir hello-world
$ cd hello-world

In your favourite editor create two files (app.py & Dockerfile) in this folder:

and

…