fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How to scrape data from dynamic websites and behind a login
By: Marc Inizan
Tags: Selenium, Web Scraping Tools, Web Scraping, Data, Web Crawler

Let’s focus on Selenium

In order to use Selenium you will need to install a webdriver such as ChromeDriver for Chrome or Gecko which is a webdriver for Firefox.

Create a webdriver instance

The syntax to create a webdriver in Python using Selenium is quite simple as you can see:

from selenium import webdriver browser = webdriver.Chrome() browser.get(“https://www.your-url.com/")

Selecting objects

Once you have created the browser object you access elements of the web page it contains using methods such as find_elements_by_class_name(“your class name here”), find_elements_by_css_selector(“”), etc…

Make sure you understand what method you are using, find_elements_by_class_name IS NOT find_element_by_class_name.

The first method will return a list of objects and the second one will only return the first object found.

If your object contains text you can access it using “.text”

Objects methods

In order to know what methods are available on a specific object you should use Python’s “dir” function on your object.

login_button = browser.find_element_by_css_selector(“input[type=’submit’]”) print(dir(login_button)) → Will show you that there is a click method available on this object

You can now click on the button by simply doing login_button.click()

A couple of other very use methods are:

send_keys(), will give you the ability to simulate keyboard controls, it gives you the ability to type a login and password to login into a website for example.

If you import Keys from selenium.webdriver.common.keys

You can also use shortcuts like Ctrl + A this way : send_keys(Keys.CONTROL,”a”)

execute_script(), will allow to run JavaScript code on the webpage. It’s extremely useful for scrolling in a specific div on the page or open a page in a new tab for example.

As far as I know some informations on the web page such as the height of a div seems to be only accessible using JavaScript.

If you want to do more advanced controls on the web page you’ll probably need to get a deeper knowledge of JavaScript and actually write some Javascript code your self.

Here is a list of JavaScript functions you can call on the web page.
Selenium 4: New Features and Updates — Testbytes
Tags: Selenium, Selenium 4

There are a lot of new features that are being promised as part of the new Selenium 4 package.

For those who are still wondering what the new features and capabilities are that are being brought and how it will impact and improve your day to day work, then please read on.

If you are an automation professional you would already know that usage of the webdriver is not restricted to Selenium.

It is also widely used in appium and iOS drivers.

The latest version of Selenium thus comes with W3C standard which would make it compatible with the implementation of the webdriver across multiple platforms.

More details regarding the bindings and the protocols are available in the GitHub if you wish to dive deeper.

One major drawback which Selenium suffered all these years is that it does not support parallel execution.

Well, not anymore. With Selenium 4, they have plugged that gap. The new IDE supports a lot of new features and much-improved browser support.

This is apart from the robust record and plays options that have been built into the new version.

The new and improved IDE is completed dependent on the webdriver, which as mentioned above is also W3C compatible.

For those of you who have actually worked with the Selenium grid, you know how difficult it is to get the setup up and running.

There are so many challenges involved.

Hurray, the makers heard you. So now you have a much-improved grid which also allows you to run your tests in multiple devices at the same.

What is more is that in Selenium 4, the grid acts as both the hub and the node, thereby avoiding the issues arising out of connecting these together.

Another important update in Selenium 4 is with respect to the logging, debugging, observations, hooks, etc.

The latest version of Selenium promises to offer details of hooks, request tracing, etc, which help in better analysis of the problems and help in fixing them at a much faster rate.

It will also give the testers a better of the requests that are initiated, the hooks to which it is latched and much more.

With the new and improved analysis feature, the tester would be equipped with much more data to share with the development team for fixing an issue.

Documentation is a very important part of any tool.

It really helps in self-learning the tool as well as fixing some very common and basic things that we may have missed.

The latest offering of Selenium comes with very detailed documentation which is easy to understand, follow and implement.

You will not need external help again if you go step by step with the documentation available.

With more and more companies switching to automation using free tools, Selenium is the forerunner.

Though primary java it supports python as well…

Know More: Selenium Tutorial For Beginners — An Overall View!

The new features will definitely add more value to this product which now widely used not only by testers but also by developers.

Now with the alpha build out, it is very likely that we will get the official confirmation for release of Selenium 4 very soon. Waiting with the abetted breadth
7 Must-read Selenium Tutorials
Tags: Selenium, Coding, Programming, JavaScript, Tech

By reading this article, you clearly want to know more about Selenium. You might even be using Selenium. The open source Selenium project supports popular development languages. Selenium tests a large percentage of web and mobile applications developed globally.

If you are new to Selenium, stuck on specific ways to leverage the drivers, or on the hunt for tools to run your perfect scripts, it can be a challenge. Here are the top 7 tutorials to make your life a little easier.

Getting Started

First, create your scripts (Test Cases). Record test cases via Selenium IDE, or write your scripts directly in the language of your choice, using the appropriate Selenium reference, and your favorite browsers driver. Here are two posts to get you introduced to the platform:

1) Writing your First Test Case In Selenium WebDriver (via Software Testing Mentor)

2) Creating your First Script in Selenium IDE (via Udemy)

Digging Deeper

Once you have your basic Selenium script, you need to do a test run. You might need to investigate more complex scripting, such as getting access to authentication only pages. Check out these three tutorials:

3) Using Selenium to Test User Login (via StackOverflow)

4) Using Selenium to test page performance (via Dean Hume)

5) Selenium Tutorial for Beginners: Learn Selenium in 7 Days (Guru99)

Getting Results

Once you have done your test runs, and have your perfect scripts, you need a great tool to run them.

That’s where Applitools comes in. Selenium gives you the functional test to ensure that your application behaves correctly in your selected combination of hardware, screen size, browser, and operating system. Validating visual behavior across each combination hits the limits of snapshot tools, but not Applitools. With Applitools, you find visual only errors that a user would find visually distinct and flag as an error — overcoming the false fails that plague standard snapshot tools.

If you are interested in using Selenium and Applitools together, we have plenty of resources available to make you successful. Take a look at these two:

6) Applitools Selenium Javascript Tutorial

7) Applitools Selenium IDE Tutorial

Selenium lets you ensure that your app behaves correctly. However, Applitools lets you both see that the Selenium script behaves as expected both functionally and visually. Applitols makes it much easier to scale your testing across all the browsers, devices, and screen sizes your customers run.

Have a Favorite Selenium Tutorial?

If you have a favorite tutorial on how to use Selenium let us know. We like to learn from Dave Haeffner. Check out this webinar about Selenium tips and tricks. Read this blog post on the resurgence of Selenium IDE.

Find Out More

Check out all the Applitools Tutorials, including the ones on Selenium.

Take the course Codeless Test Automation with Selenium IDE from Test Automation University.

Take the course Intro to Selenium WebDriver with .NET Core from Test Automation University.
How to work with JSONPath and HamCrest Library? (API Automation)
By: Pramod Dutta
Tags: Selenium, Testing, API, Web Development, Api Testing

Hey BugHunters, In this video we are going to discuss How to work with JSONPath and Hamcrest Library

This is part of the video serious REST Assured API testing Beginner Tutorial

✅ What is JSONPath?

Query language that helps us in parsing the JSON data, which can be used for validation or assertions in a test.

✅ What is the Hamcrest library?

Hamcrest is a framework that comes with a library of useful matchers for writing match rules using matcher objects.

Matchers are most commonly used for:

Writing test assertions

Data validation

Filtering JSONPath dependency

P.S:

This is Day 15 of the 30 days of API Testing challenge Series. Where will learn the Basics before jumping to API Automation.

🚀 Download PPT : https://scrolltest.com/ra/day15

🚀 All 30 Days Task — https://scrolltest.com/30days/restassured

📌 Join 30 Days Challenge Updates — https://scrolltest.com/tta

🎓 Free Automation MasterClass — https://thetestingacademy.com

📚 REST API testing with Python — https://masterapitesting.com

🚀 Resources -

🔔 Join Facebook Group : https://scrolltest.com/fb
5 Selenium Test Automation “Hacks” You Will Probably Learn Only From StackOverflow
By: Third Driver Madhawa
Tags: Selenium, QA, Test Automation, JavaScript, Java

One Dark Pro theme on IntelliJ IDEA (on Fedora)

First is installing One Dark Pro theme on IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. Kidding! Although One Dark Pro is both beautiful and useful for night owls like myself, this post is not going to focus on that. Let’s look at some things your university may not teach you therefore you have to learn it the hard way at work by Googling and skimming through Stack Overflow/ SQA - Stack Exchange.

Some might argue that these hacks are not best practices. Nevertheless, if you want to just get it done, it’s up to you. I’m a bad programmer and feel free to correct if there are mistakes here.

1. JavaScript Executor

Element not interactable. Very confusing at first. You double-check the XPath or CSS Selector just to make sure and don’t see anything wrong. You may even insert a shameless Thread.sleep(😴) and end up with nothing but the “Element not interactable” exception when you run your test. JavaScript Executor might save your arse in this case.

JavascriptExecutor is a Swiss Army Knife 🇨🇭🪖🔪

2. Disable Site Isolation Trails on Chromium

This is a tricky one and I didn’t even bother to understand why. You can read more about it here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromedriver/issues/detail?id=2660

It occurred to me when working with a page with an iframe. Switching to iframe and thereafter switching back to default gave me headaches by failing to continue tests. Adding the following arguments to ChromeOptions magically fixed the issue.

— disable-site-isolation-trials

3. Faker

This is a gold mine. When there are tests you must enter names, addresses, etc. this library will automagically generate fake data. Faker has a collection of information from popular movies and tv shows as well. Your test data doesn’t have to be lackluster anymore.

Faker faker = new Faker();

Faker: https://github.com/DiUS/java-faker

4. WebDriverManager

This one is no secret to many. WebDriverManager manages drivers for web browsers, so you don’t have to download Selenium drivers and place them in a hard coded path of your project, especially when there are big updates to web browsers.

pom.xml (Maven)

WebDriverManager: https://github.com/bonigarcia/webdrivermanager

5. Jason’s friend “Gson”

Very helpful when it’s required to fetch input from a JSON file and also when required to write to a JSON file. When used in combination with get()/ set() methods in a POJO file, it’s possible to achieve a kick-ass, dynamic automation suite.

Example: Reading

Example: Writing

Gson: https://github.com/google/gson
Cross Browser testing for React Apps
By: Shama Ugale
Tags: Selenium, React Native, React, Automation Testing

Before we discuss the cross browser testing for React apps lets get a quick essence of why do people use react to develop their apps and what is cross browser testing.

React

React and React Native, support all the major browsers across platforms ability. It means that if one would want to build an application for iOS and android platform, all they would do is have a single code base and rest is taken care by react to make it cross platform. In addition to it the support for all the major browsers and has been tested, however with a little limitations for older browser where the polyfills are used to support them.

Cross browser Testing

Cross browser testing helps you validate if your application is compatible across different browsers, platforms and devices. It becomes important today to support all the major browsers and the devices as it is almost impractical to control what platform or browsers the users would use to access your application if its a customer facing application

Now that we have a basic idea on React, do we really need to do and invest time and money on cross browser testing? The answer is depends!

Usually as part of building an application along with react developers happen to write

Their own HTLM/CSS and Use other libraries. Write polyfills to support the older browsers

In this case one would not know until tested and verified that it works seamlessly across the browsers and platforms.

In case the application doesn’t use any other libraries and/or custom HTML/CSS, then one can skip the cross browser testing.
Learn What is Selenium in a three minute read…
By: Kushan Amarasiri
Tags: Selenium, Test Automation, Selenium Webdriver

This article will help anyone who loves to learn Selenium a three minute read.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a Web UI test automation tool and API, which allows automate any Web based application. Its free and open source.

How does selenium locate UI elements?

By Name of the element given in the HTML code

By ID of the element given in the HTML code

By the Class Name of the element given in the HTML code

By the Link Text or the Partial Link Text of the element given in the HTML code

By the Tag Name the element given in the HTML code

By the XPath of the the element located in the HTML code

By the CSS Selector the element given in the HTML code

What Web Browsers it supports?

Chrome

Firefox

IE

Edge

Safari

Opera

What language bindings does Selenium have?

Java

C#

Python

Ruby

JavaScript

Perl

PHP

Objective-C

What Operating Systems does Selenium support?

Windows

Mac OS

Linux

Solaris

Let’s now try a simple test automation test case done in Java

Create a Maven Java project Add the following Selenium dependency

<dependency>

<groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>

<artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>

<version>3.141.59</version>

</dependency>

Also add the Webdriver Manager API

<dependency>

<groupId>io.github.bonigarcia</groupId>

<artifactId>webdrivermanager</artifactId>

<version>3.8.1</version>

</dependency>

3. Create a package and a class in Java and the following code.

import org.openqa.selenium.By;

import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.*;

import org.openqa.selenium.support.*;

import org.testng.Assert;

import org.testng.annotations.Test;

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

public class Selenium1 {

@Test

public void test()

{

WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

driver.get(“http://demo.guru99.com/V4/");

driver.findElement(By.name(“uid”)).sendKeys(“mngr254945”);

driver.findElement(By.name(“password”)).sendKeys(“ymytuba”);

driver.findElement(By.name(“btnLogin”)).click();





Assert.assertEquals(driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//tr[@class=’heading3']/td”)).getText(), “Manger Id : mngr254945”);

driver.close();

driver.quit();

}

}

4. Run the code as a TestNG.
Complete data pipeline using an education website as example — Part 1
By: Li-Ting Liao
Tags: Selenium, Sql, Beautifulsoup, Web Scraping

From Web Scraping (Python BeautifulSoup & Selenium), Database (mariaDB) , API (flask) to Visualization (chartJS) — Part 1

This is an article to show how I incorporate from data collecting (by web scrapping), storing data (into mariadb), creating an API(by Flask) and visualize (with chartJS).

What I’m going to make

As education websites are developing at a rapid speed in Taiwan, I’m using an education website, careernet 青創學院, as an example to showcase how I will collect all their recent courses for further analysis.

As a consumer, I can easily take an overview of what a website offers, including prices, course types, etc. so I can get an idea of the main focus of a website. In long term, as I have stored courses over time, it’s possible for me to see how the courses and prices are changing along the way.

I believe similar process can be applied for other use as well.

Skills covered in Part 1 article

Collect data from web scrapping Write scrapped data into mySQL database

Below are screenshots from the web page and database:

organized schema from scrapped data and name the table as “careernet”

Environment used: VS code, Python 3, mariadb, and Linux CentOS7.

So, let’s get started.
Awesome Browser Automation — Chapter 05
By: Karlo Smid
Tags: Selenium, Testing, Software Testing

In chapter five, we implement a simple scenario with Given/When/Then steps for adding a specific shirt to the shopping cart.

In this pull request, you can see all the files involved in chapter 05.

features/shop.feature

This is a cucumber feature file with one scenario that uses three steps:

Given have already been implemented in home steps.

When is a new step, implemented in shirt steps.

Then is a new step, implemented in cart steps.

features/step_definitions/cart.rb

Here we implement the cart steps. Then step, where we expect that item_name text value is equal to shirt name.

features/step_definitions/shirt.rb

In this step, we click on the item element that has a shirt name Dark Thug Blue-Navy T-Shirt. Note that we use an unpopular sleep method, with hardcoded one second.

features/support/cart.rb

This is class for a cart page objects. It has one paragraph p attribute with long XPath. got Xpath value automatically, using Chrome developers tools copy Xpath option. We p attribute is the method implemented in page object accessors. p attribute generates three methods: item_name, item_name_element, and item_name? We use item_name, that returns HTML p element text value.

features/support/shirt.rb

Class for shirt page object with one div element, located using long XPath. div page object accessors implements three methods: add_to_cart, add_to_cart_element and add_to_cart? We use the add_to_cart_element method that returns the Watir div object. That object has a click method.

Now you can run:

cucumber features/shop.feature

The test should pass.

In the next chapter, we will replace sleep with the wait method. Using sleep is not a good option because the sleep method is run only once. wait for method implements under the hood conditional loop, where condition waits for page element to become present/visible. Long Xpath locator will be replaced with the adjacent nodes method. Long Xpath is breakable when elements are inserted along the path. The longer the path, the greater the chance that XPath would become obsolete. Adjacent nodes are more robust to page element changes because we locate an element using adjacent HTML elements that are located using more stable locators (for example name, text or id).
Mastering XPATH for Selenium Testers [With Locator CheatSheet]
By: Pramod Dutta
Tags: Selenium, QA, Testing, Test Automation, Web Development

✅ Join us — https://sendfox.com/thetestingacademy

In this video, We are discussing XPath in selenium web driver and we are going to master them one by one.

✅ What is XPath?

XPath can be used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document.

XPath is a syntax for defining parts of an XML document

XPath uses path expressions to navigate in XML documents

Mastering XPath/ CSS is essential for the Selenium test automation engineers to locate dynamic web elements, elements without ids or names, and elements with dynamic ids and names.

✅ Why do we need to learn many XPath?

Locating elements with partially static attribute values

Locating elements with respect to a known element

Locating elements without attributes or without unique attributes

XPath can do bidirectional navigation (Going forward and backward)

✅ Types of XPath

Absolute XPath starts with the root break when minor structural changes lengthier and hence they are not readable /html/body/header/div/a /html/body/header/div/a

Relative Xpath Relative XPaths are started with two forward slashes ‘// locating elements with respect to an element with known (solid) XPath //form/div[@id =’divUsername’]/input Absolute XPaths are faster than the relative XPaths

🚀 Day 11 Task: Mastering XPATH for Selenium Testers

🚀 Thread: https://scrolltest.com/automation/day11

🚀 All Task List: https://scrolltest.com/automation/task

🚀 Watch Full Playlist: https://scrolltest.com/automation/playlist
Competition: ‘Wonder Woman 1984' on Blu-ray!
By: Frame Rated Staff
Tags: Features, Wonder Woman, Movies, Competition, Film

The fate of the world is once more on the line, and only Wonder Woman can save it. This new chapter in the Wonder Woman story finds Diana Prince living quietly among mortals in the vibrant, sleek 1980s-an era of excess driven by the pursuit of having it all. Though she’s come into her full powers, she maintains a low profile, curating ancient artifacts and only performing her superheroic acts incognito. But now, Diana will have to step directly into the spotlight and muster all her wisdom, strength and courage in order to save mankind from a world of its own making.

It’s time for a hero when WONDER WOMAN 1984 arrives on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on 22 March 2021. The film is directed by Patty Jenkins and stars Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) in the title role. The film also co-stars Chris Pine (Star Trek) as Steve Trevor, Kristen Wiig (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) as Barbara Minerva, Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) as Maxwell Lord, Robin Wright (Blade Runner 2049) as Antiope, and Connie Nielsen (I Am the Night) as Hippolyta.

You can read our own Jeffrey Bricker’s review of the film by clicking the image below.

To celebrate this release, Frame Rated are giving away 2x Blu-rays of Wonder Woman 1984 to lucky readers. One could be you!

To be in with a chance of winning this prize, answer this question:

Which island does Diana Prince come from?

a) Themyscira.

b) Fantasy Island.

c) Asgard.

If you know the answer:
WHAT IS THE REAL COMPETITION?
By: Hrishikesh Kalita
Tags: Success, Life Lessons, Competition, Life, Education

Race

With butterflies in the stomach, he unwillingly pressed upon the Enter key. For the first time in his life, he wanted the load time to extend infinitely. “Reload it. Did you check the website properly? It’s www.cbse.nic.in”, his father said from behind. After a long wait, it showed up. “Only 85 % ??” his father greatly emphasized on the word ‘only’. On the screen beside, the news flashed: CBSE Topper Scores 499/500!

This isn’t some cooked up fairy tale. Situations like these are quite often faced by the young generation of today. It’s quite a hypocritical world; a gentle arm rises in their support stating the young generation to be the future of this world but at the same time the other hand stabs an iron knife from behind by questioning their decisions, passions, habits, manners, virtues, styles, etc. and dissecting their wings before they could even fly free in the sky for once.

It’s not their fault probably. They want their kids to shine; to outsmart others; to rise to the top. But in their blind ambition for their kids, they forget the most basic principle of life.

Everyone is not born equal.

Each and every individual is born different. They have their own unique skills; different passion; different goals; different views on life. The system we have at the present never takes those factors into account.

Just imagine that you are filling petrol, diesel, gasoline, LPG, natural gas, aviation fuel in a vehicle that runs on petrol. What do you think would happen?

Success is relative; dependent on the individual. What different would they be from a fully programmed robot, if they have to live a life which is not at all theirs’; a guided mechanism thrown at them which they are bound to follow. I could literally see their blank faces when they stop and look behind for their tracks; their prints. But they could never see their footprints treading over the path they took; it’s always someone else’s.

The real competitor for us is we ourselves. The fight has been always within us. According to me, victory is achieved, when, at the end of the day we slide into our beds, stare at the ceiling and with a smile, say to ourselves :

“I am better than what I was yesterday.”

That sigh of satisfaction and attitude of being happy is what matters and helps us win any battle in our lives.
Essay competition for college students-Vivekananda Kendra and Rock Memorial, Kanyakumari
By: Https
Tags: Essay, Ias Essay, Essay Competition, Essay Writing, Competition

Essay competition for college students-Vivekananda Kendra and Rock Memorial, Kanyakumari

Subject: Essay competition for college students on the occasion of Universal Brotherhood Day

-Vivekananda Kendra and Rock Memorial, Kanyakumari

As you might know, September 11, 1893 is an important milestone in Indian history. On this day, at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, Swami Vivekananda unveiled the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of India and introduced them to the entire world.

To commemorate this historically important day, Vivekananda Kendra and Rock Memorial, Kanyakumari celebrates 11th September of every year as the Universal Brotherhood Day. Consequently, our organization has been conducting several activities and competitions in educational institutions across the nation on this occasion. The theme of these activities mainly focuses on engaging students in their personality development and nation building.

This year, we are conducting an essay competition in Kannada language for the college students. Due to logistical challenges imposed by the COVID pandemic, we are conducting this competition online. The details of the competition- including the topic, timelines and the mode of submission- have been provided in the cover letter and flyer attached. We sincerely request you to be kind enough to encourage the students of your esteemed institution to actively participate in the competition.

In case of any clarifications/queries, kindly contact: Sri Mohan Kumblekar (9448123830) / Sri Vinay SV (9481481000)

With sincere Pranams,

Sri Mohan Kumblekar

Organizer of Universal Brotherhood Day

Vivekananda Kendra and Rock Memorial, Karnataka Vibhaga

https://sajjanvsl.blogspot.com/2021/09/essay-competition-for-college-students.html?m=0
HEdpAY Competition Rules AT XT.Com
By: Hedpay Hdp.Ф
Tags: Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hedpay, Cryptocurrency, Competition

BUY 100 Hdp @XT.com and do 1–10 tasks

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What is your ideal customer and competitors?
By: Thanasegar Rasaratnam
Tags: Competition, Marketing

Shatiswaran Gunalan

For the next part, we will be discussing more about marketing. As we all know, marketing is an important department in all businesses. Today, we are going to talk about customers and competitors of Mr. Shatiswaran’s barbering business. Customers and competitors affects the business both for good and bad. The good side about it is that is gives a business an opportunity to improve whereas the bad side of it is the business would not be profitable. Also, if you’re wondering who Shatiswaran is, please look at our previous post to find out more about him.

Who is your ideal customer and how did you go about figuring this out?

My ideal customer is someone that accepts my services with feelings of satisfaction and will continue to be loyal to services. Well, if a customer that is happy and loyal to your services then that’s a good sign there. You should expect to see him a lot and eventually you’ll have new customers because he refer them to you. A loyal customer can do the marketing job for you.

2) How much time is spent each week with customers and what is your advise in finding new customers?

It’s depending on the day. I would ideally spend 30–45 minutes with each customer but if it’s a hectic day I would probably take less time than that. I don’t like to seem my customers waiting. Advise in finding new customer, I think the easiest one would be to build a good relationship with your regular and new customers because when they do feel comfortable with you and your services, they would recommend you to their family and friends. You could also post anything about your business in your social media page, just to create awareness to those that you’re connected with. There is no harm trying..

3) What tips do you have in learning more about my competitors and what can I do to be better than them?

Research! Do all of research about them whether it be through their business side, flyers or even ask people. The more you know about them, the more you know on how you can improve your business. For example you can look into their weaknesses as an opportunity for you to be better than them or you can look into their strengths as a source of improving your business.

4) How much did you invested on your marketing efforts?

Well for me marketing is key! I wouldn’t mind spending a lot of money on the right marketing strategy. But where I’m at now, I’m just spending more or less around 5K for brochures, flyers, promotions, posters, sign boards and others. My goal is to create awareness among the people in my area showing them that I’m willing to offer them a good service.

5) What’s your next plan when you can finally say that you’re business is doing really good?

I’m not going to stop! I’m gonna keep improving my marketing efforts and maybe try to get staffs that will help me cover more customers. I’m also looking into expanding the size of my shop so I can get more customers in and maybe have a bar or something inside. We’ll see.. But yeah, there is going to be a lot of good things coming up for the business.
A message to you all: this year I am not going to DNS
By: Sally Goble
Tags: Self-awareness, Wild Swimming, Swimming, Open Water Swimming, Competition

A message to you all: this year I am not going to DNS

Three days to go. Four days and it will be done. Four days and I’ll be wondering what I was so worried about. Honestly you’d think I’d never swum the bloody Channel – the amount of stress, nerves and self doubt I have accumulated over a 10km swim. In my younger days I’d have been relieved at the prospect of a mere 10km swim.

Anyway. There’s a pattern that you should know about.

Mid November I start getting excited about the following year’s open water season. I enter, and pay for, a *marathon swim event or two. With the benefit of a six month stretch until my first event, I smugly enjoy the thought of the preparing for, and completing, a swim that has required a reasonable amount of effort to train for and complete.

January training begins. I’m full of resolve and hit the pool with focus.

March I realise I haven’t got any faster, in fact I’ve got slower.

May I am full of self doubt and loathing, despite the mileage and distance training going to plan.

June, the date of my first marathon swim event looms close. I find a reason not to show up to the event I’ve entered.

I whisper my excuses to anyone who cares, but mostly to myself.

I DNS. “Did Not Start”.

Did Not Start. Did Not want to die during an event. Did Not want to finish last. Did Not want to admit that I’m not the swimmer I once was. Did Not want to have one more stress piling on an already large pile of self doubt. Did Not realise that it would be so easy to quietly let myself down.

This year, though, is different. I am not going to DNS. This year I Will Start. There, I’ve told you and now I have to do it.

This year I have done a good volume of training. This year I’m slower and, yeah, I’m going to try my hardest not to care about that. This year someone has to come last, and it might as well be me. This year I am going to finally realise that doing something that you find mentally challenging is the hardest scariest and best thing of all. This year, Jubilee River 10km, I’m coming to get you.

I’ll see you on the start line.

*A marathon swim is a distance of 10km or further. At the speed I’m swimming right now, that will probably take me 5 hours.
Nowadays, older people who need employment have to compete with younger people. What problems does this cause and what are the solutions?
By: Arpit Nagpal
Tags: Job Search, Competition, Old Age, Old Age Problems

Nowadays, older people who need employment have to compete with younger people. What problems does this cause and what are the solutions? Arpit Nagpal Jun 1·2 min read

Photo by Beth Macdonald on Unsplash

In today’s time, anyone seeking employment has to compete with each other regardless of age. This has become a matter of concern specially for older people. It is creating a pile of problems for elder people, just to mention some, firstly it is very difficult for them to find job. Even after getting the job, they have to do work more than their capacity which ultimately leads to some serious health risks.

Considering the matter of finding job, it is very tedious for older people as if we consider the employer’s perspective, when he is getting a choice of selecting from an elder person and younger person, he’ll definitely go for a younger one as he might get his work done faster as compared to an old person. So, this is one of the reasons why they face difficulty while trying to get job. But this can be solved easily by creating vacancy for just people in certain age bracket. By doing this older people will have reduced competition for the same position.

But during current scenario, even if an old person gets hired, he/she would have to go through a lot of work which might be well over his/her potential considering their age. For example, if a post requires a person to complete their daily/monthly given task which does not consider age factor, elder people might have to go beyond their ability just to achieve their target, which certainly leads to some health issues. To overcome this, a limit can be set according to each work for elderly people, so that they do get overburdened by their target. To add on, the employing company can also offer some kind of medical assistance and insurance for such people so that they may feel secure and may also be able to avail it in time of need.

To conclude, I want to say that the situation has got worse in today’s world of information technology. So, certain actions have to be taken as soon as possible to cater to the elder people’s need.
Opening Internet Monopolies to Competition with Data Sharing Mandates
By: Claudia Biancotti
Tags: Privacy, Competition, Security, Artificial Intelligence

Claudia Biancotti, Paolo Ciocca

From PIIE.com

Over the past few years, it has become apparent that a small number of technology companies have assembled detailed datasets on the characteristics, preferences, and behavior of billions of individuals. This concentration of data is at the root of a worrying power imbalance between dominant internet firms and the rest of society, reflecting negatively on collective security, consumer rights, and competition. Introducing data sharing mandates, or requirements for market leaders to share anonymous user data with other firms and academia, would have a positive effect on competition. As data are a key input for artificial intelligence (AI), more widely available information would help spread the benefits of AI through the economy. On the other hand, data sharing could worsen existing risks to consumer privacy and collective security. Policymakers intending to implement a data sharing mandate should carefully evaluate this tradeoff.

Read full paper
It’s Our 15th Birthday!
By: Sharky, George Events
Tags: Competition, Birthday, Children

…and we’re celebrating in style (of course).

It’s Our 15th Birthday!

We threw our first party a whopping 15 years ago today. It’s amazing how fast the time flies when you’re always having fun.

It all started with the original party starters Charlie and George. They’ve been friends since they were 12, and after being told to run the games for their housemaster’s daughter’s 6th birthday as punishment for pranking him, the idea of Sharky & George was born!

Over the years we’ve created magical unicorn wonderlands, banging disco raves, superhero spectaculars and everything in between! We’re celebrating these fun-filled 15 years in style by offering you the chance to win an epic party with Charlie and George, complete with all the bells and whistles.

To enter, head over to our Facebook page or Instagram Page. You’ll need to ‘Like’ the competition post and guess how many parties we’ve thrown over the years in the comments below.

The competition closes on Monday 8th April, and the winner will be announced on our social media pages.

Good luck!

The full terms and conditions can be found below:

Terms and Conditions

The promoter is Sharky & George Ltd, whose registered office is at 3b Imperial Studios, 3–11 Imperial Road, London SW6 2AG. The competition is open to residents of the United Kingdom aged 18 years and over, the party must take place in London at a date confirmed by Charlie & George. There is no entry fee and no purchase necessary to enter this competition. By entering this competition, an entrant is indicating his/her agreement to be bound by these terms and conditions. The route to entry for the competition and details of how to enter are via The Sharky & George Facebook and Instagram page. Only one entry will be accepted per person. Multiple entries from the same person will be disqualified. Closing date for entry will be Monday 8th April 2019. After this date, no further entries to the competition will be permitted. No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received for whatever reason. The promoter reserves the right to cancel or amend the competition and these terms and conditions without notice in the event of a catastrophe, war, civil or military disturbance, act of God or any actual or anticipated breach of any applicable law or regulation or any other event outside of the promoter’s control. Any changes to the competition will be notified to entrants as soon as possible by the promoter. The promoter is not responsible for inaccurate prize details supplied to any entrant by any third party connected with this competition. The prize is as follows:

The prize is a Sharky & George party hosted by Charlie and George. The party is for 20 people and has to happen in London or the surrounding areas, at a date confirmed by Charlie and George. The party is for children or adults of any age and the theme will be chosen by Charlie & George. The Party will include all the Sharky & George bells and whistles, including party bags treats and decorations. The prize must be claimed by the 31st of December 2019.
Me v/s You to Me with You
Tags: Self-awareness, Comparison, Self Improvement, Competition, Life

from Unsplash

Compete is derived from the Latin word “Compéter” which means “To strive together”.

Often people mistake to understand the difference between having a competitive spirit and comparison. As a civilization, competition is an extremely important tool for pushing our boundaries towards the better. It helps an individual evolve and reach the untapped potentials within them.

If Apple wouldn’t have been there then Microsoft wouldn’t have had a great rival to push them forward and vice-versa. All of us need someone to push ourselves forward and make us realize our untapped potentials within us.

But here’s a thing about competition, if we have an unhealthy perspective towards competition it can get us stuck in an infinite loop which can make us envious about other’s achievement instead of getting inspired by them.

Only if we allow ourselves to change our perspective of looking at competition and comparison differently we can get the best of ourselves.

I know how cliche it is to say the proverb “Compete with yourself every day”, but that’s the plain simple truth to look at the competition. Do a comparison, but to get inspired and to fight with the person you were yesterday to be better today.

Brett Ledbetter in his Tedx talk explains, how can we change the perspective of competing Me v/s You to Me with You.

Believe me, if we work together with our competitions as a team to fight with the person we were yesterday, we can have exponential growth in whatever we desire to do. It’s just a matter of fact how we look at competitions and comparisons.
New Year Staking Competition — 50 Staking spots up for grabs — Ends on Monday 3rd Feb at 12:00 UTC
Tags: Bitcoin, Vra, Comp, Verasity, Competition

About Verasity

Verasity is a leading company providing rewarded video player technology to major publishers across the globe. The patent-pending video player enables tokenized rewards (VRA) as well as loyalty schemes within a video player wallet. The unique technology is already available to more than 2 million video publishers with 550 million users and 110 billion monthly views bringing engagement and revenues back to publishers’ sites. Verasity’s attention-based model creates a thriving VRA token economy between viewers, video publishers and advertisers.

Verasity is the future of online video.

Verasity Products include: VeraWallet: verawallet.tv

Verasity technology is now integrated into the following video players on publishers’ sites: YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo, JWPlayer, Brightcove, Kaltura, VideoJS, Flowplayer, and Ooyala which represents over 95% of all the video players utilized.

📈 Find where VRA/VRAB (ticker) is trading on CoinMarketCap

VRA and VRAB can be staked for 36.5% annual interest at https://verawallet.tv.

Follow Us:

Medium: https://medium.com/verasity

Twitter: https://twitter.com/verasitytech

Website: https://verasity.io

Telegram Token Discussion: http://t.me/verasitychat

Telegram Token Announcements: https://t.me/verasity

Verasity Mobile Telegram: https://t.me/verasity_mobile

Kakao: https://open.kakao.com/o/gh8ZK0cb

Facebook: https://facebook.com/verasitytech

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/verasity

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/verasity

Blockfolio Signals: Follow VRA/VRAB to receive updates straight from the team

Join our local groups, we have support in the following languages

Russian chat 🇷🇺 — https://t.me/VerasityRU

Korean chat 🇰🇷 — https://open.kakao.com/o/gh8ZK0cb

Turkish chat 🇹🇷 — https://t.me/VerasityTR

Vietnamese chat 🇻🇳 — https://t.me/Verasity_Vietnam

Brazilian chat 🇧🇷 — https://t.me/Verasity_BR
Extended until January 15th! Keyword Staking Design Competition
Tags: Staking, Cryptocurrency, Presearch, Design, Competition

First of all, we’d like to thank all the community members that have taken the time to create some designs for our upcoming Keyword Staking (ad) Platform.

We have decided to give some interim awards to some valuable submissions that don’t quite fit the criteria for the landing page. Due to the holidays, we have decided to extend the design competition until January 15th, 2020. This should give designers some additional time to work on actual landing pages.

To make it more clear what we’re looking for, we have a few examples to give you a better idea of what we mean when we say ‘landing page’.

1. NEXO Landing Page

2. Google AdWords Landing Page

3. Binance Staking Landing Page

4. Ideally, you’d submit something similar to the Presearch Marketplace landing page but with a stronger call to action (such as the calls to action mentioned in the original contest announcement).

We’re looking forward to all the great designs you can come up with. Please send your designs to designers@presearch.io and you can find the original contest (and terms) at: https://medium.com/@presearch/keyword-staking-design-competition-a5d0b640bd58

Good luck on winning yourself 100k PRE Tokens !
A journey to Paraguay
Tags: Paraguay, Challenge, Travel, Win, Competition

A journey to Paraguay

What are your resolutions for the new year? Maybe you want to invest in a greener future, live more sustainably or protect the environment? We at TreeCoin are committed to sustainable environmental protection and afforestation in Paraguay. So far, around 375000 trees have been planted, and 10 Million should be added. Become part of this fantastic journey.

For the adventurous among you, TreeCoin is giving away a trip for two to the project’s hotspots. Follow us to La Rivera, the impressive eucalyptus plantations. Let’s travel together to a bird reserve in neighboring Brazil and take a helicopter flight over the waterfalls of Iguazú. Visit Itaipu, one of the largest hydroelectric power station in the world, and our rainforest reforestation area. On the last day of this fantastic six-day trip, we will go to the beautiful capital Asuncion.

To take part in the competition, leave us a message in the , and follow TreeCoin Telegram group with #takemetoparaguay until February 15th, 2020. Comment your New Years’ resolution below our Instagram Post, leave a like @treecointxc. To double your chances, share the competition on Social Media with your friends and don’t forget to tag TreeCoin and use the hashtag #takemetoparaguay. Good luck & see you soon in Paraguay.