4 Things to look for in a Vinyl wrap company

When it comes to purchasing a wrap, people are very selective and choosey on what to pick. This is because there are so many options on the market to choose from and at times it can be tricky and confusing.

However, this is not the main problem as the challenge and the confusion that arises on which company is best at this business and why that is. The company you choose to represent you and be your brand and the main supplier of your vinyl wrap must have certain qualities that will be outlined to help guide you in choosing which the best is.

There are so many frauds in the market with counterfeits to take advantage of people by offering sub-standard quality goods. It is for this reason that you need to be careful of the company and even go a step further as to doing a background check to verify its authenticity. Below are some of the things to look for in a vinyl wrap company:

1. The quality
   This is an important aspect to look at and verify before you make a purchase. It is true that cheap can be expensive, but you should ensure that you get what your money is worth. This is in terms of quality. You should look for a company that has a high-quality product. You can get this information from online reviews made by previous customers. You can also go a step further as contacting the previous customer to check on the quality of the product. Quality is what you need, don’t just buy, you should verify it first.
   

2. The varieties available - 
   When you are choosing a company that will handle your vinyl wrap product, it is important to have a wide variety to choose from. This is because, with the mixture of choices, you will be able to choose one that suits you. This could not have been the case if you were limited to a number of choices. Variety makes it more fun to even alternate. It is best advised that you even look for a company that makes custom made vinyl wraps to explore your creativity and uniqueness.
   

3. The warranty
   A good vinyl wrap company will have an extended warranty of their product if it is good as advertised. At WrapsStudio, they offer a lifetime warranty. This means that if your vinyl wrap is old or damaged and needs replacement, all you need is to send the old wrap and they give you a new one. This means that you will make a lifetime partnership and investment that won’t be costing you. This also shows excellence assurance on their quality and will save you a lot of money that could have been from the purchases for replacement.
   

4. Experience and reputation
   If a company has done a vinyl wrap production and distribution for a long time, this means that they are the best in the market and they thrive at what they do. You need however to verify that it is true. You can do this by asking the previous customers their experience with the company. What are their pros and cons and how have they improved on their cons if any.
   

With the above things, it will be easy for you to make a selection of the best vinyl wrap company in the market.

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Pros and Cons of Mobile GPS Tracking

Innovation in mobile phone tracking technology allows business owners and parents to track the whereabouts of their employees and family members, at any time of the day. However, this tech presents a double-edged sword that features benefits and drawbacks. Let’s analyze the pros and cons of implementing tracking technology in your life, and that of your employees and family.

Find a Lost Device

The most significant advantage of mobile tracking technology is the fact that you can find a lost, stolen, or misplaced device. All you need to do to find out the location of the phone or tablets is log onto an app like GPS–Handy Orten and execute a search command. The app pinpoints your device with outstanding accuracy providing you with the location history

Keep an Eye on Family Members

Concerned parents can use a third-party tracking app to keep an eye on their children. If your child exhibits irrational behavior and you’re worried about what they’re getting up to a tracking app can provide you with peace of mind.

The app tracks their movements and gives you a complete history of where they’ve been during the day. There’s no more getting away with skipping school or telling you they’re going to the movies when they’re going somewhere else. A tracking app works as long as their phone is online, and if there’s a gap in their location history, you’ll know somethings not right.

Monitor Driver Behavior

Third party apps let you monitor driver behavior. This feature serves business owners and parents. If you think your driver is wasting business resources and running errands on your time, a third-party tracking app lets you know their movements.
The app alerts you of any driver misconduct, such as talking on the phone or texting while driving. You’ll receive alerts of and hard braking or speeding as well. This system works well for monitoring the behavior of delivery drivers, and learner drivers.

Protect Company Data and Assets

A third party tracking app can take things to the next level for protection of your business data and assets. Can you imagine if your employee's phone goes missing? They may have sensitive business documents or data on their phone that your competitors are dying to get their hands on at any cost. A tracking app prevents this data from falling into the wrong hands. If you can’t recover the phone, you have the option to wipe it clean.

Certain tracking apps allow you to monitor communications behavior, as well as location data. Track your employees or family member’s texts, search history, and call logs without them being any the wiser. If your child is lying to you about their whereabouts or what they did during the day, you can check up on their communications and discover if they're telling the truth.

Invasion of Privacy – The Ethical Debate

This level of tracking causes a moral crisis with some people. Your children and employees may not like the fact that you’re monitoring their every move. It may seem kind of creepy.
However, In the case of your business, you have the right to know what our employees are doing with your time and money. If they feel you are invading their privacy, then they must have something to hide.
The ethical problem is a bit more challenging when it comes to covertly monitoring your children’s or spouse’s behavior. You could consider it the same as reading their private diary. The decision to use covert tracking software is up to the individual and its line that you’ll have to cross by yourself.

Loss of Trust

If you’re discovered using covert tracking software on your employees or children without their knowledge, it may cause a crisis of trust between you.
People don’t like to know that someone is spying on them, even when he or she is doing nothing wrong. The choice is up to you, take it or leave it, face the consequences if you get caught.

Wrapping Up – The Pro’s Outweigh the Cons
Overall we can say that the pros of implementing tracking software in your business or at home outweigh the cons. In the case of data loss, or one of your children going missing, a tracking app is invaluable to the recovery of the device or learning your child’s whereabouts.

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8 Evolving Printing Trends in 2018

The buzzword in offices around the world over the past few years have been 'we are going paperless'. Unfortunately for the vast majority of businesses who have said that repeatedly in the past 3-5 years it has not quite materialised.
Far from being a dying industry, printing is a mission-critical function, even though many innovations and initiatives are moving away from physical printing, the business is ready to evolve along with them.

Managed Print Services (MPS)

This is a fast-growing printing trend for small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) where technology and cloud-based solutions are part of the service provided, and this ever-increasing trend has created a new marketplace for solution providers.
Recent trends in office related printing have seen the shift toward multifunctional machines and inkjet technology. 3-in-1 devices save time, money and also frees up more office space.

The Generation Gap

Millenials are driving significant changes in the workplace. With almost 50% of the global workforce now they will account for around 75% by 2025. Millenials are more familiar with working on digital devices, simply put they work differently to the older generation who prefer traditional methods that are paper related.

This is something that is common to most business owners in 2018, but it is not as simple as eliminating your entire printing policy and expect everybody to switch without issues occurring. Training is a must when you have a diverse set of staff of different generations. In the meantime you find yourself having to cater to both.

Multifunction Vs. Single Function

Multifunction printers (MFPs)
This trend came to the fore in 2016 when global shipments of MFP's eclipsed single-function printers. As we speak the gap between the two are widening making it a straightforward decision for businesses that cannot be paperless to go with a device that is a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine. As the business world becomes more competitive, businesses focus on cost efficiency as more management of printing fleets come into play

Inkjet Printer Vs. Laser Printer

For many years now laser printing has dominated the office scene, on average less than 10% of office printing in western countries is being done using an inkjet printer using Ink cartridges.
But inkjet technology is evolving and in leaps and bounds in speed and quality, add to this that it is more cost effective than laser printing (especially in suppliers, power and repairs).
HP and Epson are pushing the boundaries with inkjet technology in the belief that SME's will find it more suitable cost-wise especially in the start-up phase. So we can expect to see Inkjet printers making somewhat of a comeback and taking a more significant share of the market by 2020.

A3 Market Competition

The A3 market is estimated globally at US$55 billion per year.
Inevitably that comes with significant competition and recently it has been getting intense. HP gate crashed and disrupted the market last year with a new twist on PageWide its inkjet technology. A3 played a significant role in HP's US$1.05 billion deal to acquire Samsung's printer business in the 4th quarter of last year. Although they stole a march on the competition, the competition has been busy themselves. Take Canon for instance, they unveiled new A3 third-generation ImageRunner printers, and Xerox followed suit launching multiple new A3 machines.

RECOMMENDED REVIEW - Why Are Printers So Cheap, but Printer Ink is So Expensive?

 

Managed Print Services Growing for SMBs

Managed print services (MPS) are companies that evaluate and propose printing management for a business to help control usage and cost, make printing more efficient and provide cloud-based technologies. This has created a new arena for management software companies that leaves businesses with many options right now. As more MPS providers arise it is creating higher competition and resulting in lower pricing while opening the door to various industries in need of the assistance they provide

 

MPS Providers Expand Their Sights

The growing trend this year and next with MPS is they are becoming full-service. Traditionally a MPS would manage your print solutions, which was of course, useful to any business, but now we see a branch out from tradition. They are becoming more affiliated and involved with their customers, covering their IT landscape too.
This trend has many SME business owners looking at MPS in a very different light as managing just print solutions, although in itself a pivotal role, compare it with managing a company's entire IT landscape makes them invaluable to the business.

Document Security

Document security seems like it should be relatively simple and straightforward, it must ensure that the correct person or business receives the correct document. However, making sure you have the best and tightest software is key. As we go digital, we must ensure that there are no breaches in document distribution, such as a classified document fell into the wrong hands for example. We tend to see this happen when companies are looking to consolidate their printing fleets. So new solutions have come along for added and bolstered security such as personal swipe ID and passwords, with all data being back-up in the cloud where it is retrievable even if deleted or lost.

Conclusion
In September of last year, we saw HP announce the deal to acquire Samsung's printing business for US$1.05, the industry as a whole is now shifting to the realisation that this will be the beginning of many more collaborations and combinations in the printer space industry as it continues to take-on rapid and significant changes. It looks very lightly that there will be a consolidation of the number of providers in the marketplace but what will be left will be intense competition, creating ever more ground-breaking software solutions coupled with a price-war to gain customers. All this is good news if you are an SME looking to work alongside an MPS.

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Xoom, PayPal service: How to Send & Receive Money in Nigeria and other Unsupported countries

Xoom, PayPal service: How to Send & Receive PayPal Money in Nigeria, and other Unsupported countries 2018 - Xoom is a newly acquired PayPal service that lets you easily send & receive money in and out of Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, Ethiopia, Namibia, Tanzania and many other countries that cannot receive payments via PayPal, regardless whether you're in the country or outside Nigeria (in via currencies, especially Naira is supported now because it's the country's major currency). Sign up here for Xoom account by PayPal

With PayPal's Xoom you can request money, mobile reloads/recharge your mobile from any where, and perform bill payments from friends and family in the U.S.

 In time Xoom will be more used and welcomed by those living in and outside diaspora,

Here's more of all what you need to know about Xoom Nigeria


HOW XOOM WORKS
Xoom is here to bridge every gap, this means you'd be able to receive, send and withdraw money through this PayPal's service known as Xoom.
Easy and affordable, Instant Bank Deposit and Secure. Plus, Xoom offers a money-back guarantee for your peace of mind

HOW TO SEND & RECEIVE MONEY FROM USA WITH XOOM BY PAYPAL
It's quite simple to send money or receive money in Nigeria via Xoom.
Login or Sign up for Xoom account here >> You also can choose to Login with your PayPal  account, this will merge your PayPal with your Xoom account. Follow the steps below after you're logged in.

1. Select the country you want to send money to e.g Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, or any other countries that cannot receive payments via PayPal.



2.Click Send Money. This again will prompt you to choose the country where you want to send money to. This is also the country where the receiver's bank is located.
The amount the receiver will get will be displayed, it is calculated using exchange rates used by the platform.

3. Confirm you want to send the amount

4. Select How you want to Pay >> there are various options for you here and this is where you'll find XOOM PAYPAL TRANSFER FEES (at the time this post was published)

• Bank Account (Transaction fee: 4.99 USD)
• Credit Card (Transaction fee: 9.99 USD)
• Debit Card (Transaction fee: 9.99 USD)

5. Recipient information
Enter the receiver's bank account details and go to next stage where you'll pay and send the money.

Here is a list of Banks Supported by PayPal Xoom

Access Bank plc

Diamond Bank

Ecobank Nigeria

Enterprise Bank

Fidelity Bank

FIRSTBANK

First City Monument Bank Ltd

Guaranty Trust Bank PLC

Heritage Bank

Keystone Bank

Skye Bank Plc

Stanbic Bank

Sterling Bank

Union Bank

United Bank for Africa Plc

Unity Bank PLC

WEMA

6. Review: Xoom will take a moment to review the details your prov and approve the transaction.
There you go! Money sent.

Xoom Transfer Exchange Rates - The rate varies for each country according to their local currencies, and it might be lower than you expect but overall the rate is almost very good, I guess this is also where the platform makes its money from)

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5 Most Popular eCommerce Marketplace builders for Multi-Vendors

There's recently been a large rise of vendors and shoppers online, hence the need to build more marketplaces online for them, so today, you'll find out the best and most popular eCommerce marketplace builders online and everything you need to know about them in this concise honest review.

Before heading to the main review, quickly allow me to summarize what eCommerce Marketplace builders are all about, and the goals they help vendors accomplish. You can scroll down now if you already know about it.

What is an eCommerce Marketplace builder?

These are powerful software that allow a person or a company effectively run their business that has to do with helping different vendors or retailers sell their products of various kinds to online shoppers or customers in return for commission from the vendors. In other words, this software lets your users rent or sell goods, spaces or services online after which they pay you a commission for providing them the platform (marketplace). Some of the biggest and successful websites that are good examples of eCommerce for independent sellers are AirBnB, Etsy, and Themeforest.


When you get an eCommerce marketplace builder then you can achieve great results, or even better results than them.


Now, back to the main topic: a few marketplace builders have emerged the Internet and they're doing great for vendors, marketplace owners, and shoppers due to their nice and productive functionalities, hence we will be reviewing the 5 Most popular eCommerce Marketplace builders for Multi-Vendor marketplace so you can make the best choice if you consider getting one soon.

1. CS-Cart Multi-Vendor

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Quick Review

CS-Cart Multi-Vendor is a standalone eCommerce software that allows you to create an online marketplace. In Multi-Vendor, independent vendors can sell their products through a single storefront. CS-Cart is straightforward and doesn't need external plugins, as everything is built-in and super easy to customise and roll-out for the marketplace owners, vendors and shoppers.

CS-Cart also offers Mobile App (iOS and Android) for marketplaces, the app is fully synced with the web and mobile version of the marketplace.

Advantages

• 500+ admin functions
• Real-time and manual shipping calculations
• Separate vendor panel
• Separate mini store for every vendor
• Vendor account balance, sales reports & statistics and even more vendor features
• 26 built-in translations
• You can try free for 30 days and create your free personal demo, No credit cards required when signing up for that.
• Offers mobile app for marketplace (iOS and Android)
• Supports listing physical and digital products

Disadvantages

• The software is quite pricey

Summary
Apart from the price, we can deduce that the popular CS-Cart eCommerce Marketplace builder has the best and most robust features than other marketplace builders for vendors which makes this software to be a wise choice.

There's more added value to the list of advantages it offers, a mobile app for your vendor marketplace is also among. It's highly recommended as one of the most reliable softwares for creating an online marketplace right now and you can try it free for 30 days.

2. Sharetribe

Sharetribe Review
Sharetribe Marketplace builder takes care of the technology, with frequent updates. With Sharetribe you can create a marketplace website exactly the way you want it to look. Simple to customize. The interface is slick and Sharetribe’s registration and listing process is adapted to work more towards individual sellers than organized stores.

With this you can build your own concept, with your own brand.

Advantages

• It comes with payment plans if you want less or more features
• Super quick setup
• Create a marketplace in minutes.
• No need for online marketplace software installation.
• No developers needed

Disadvantages

• It comes with good number of extra-charges here and there.
• Wouldn’t suit for uploading large numbers of products

Summary
Sharetribe's design is pretty slick and although it's also quite expensive and paid on monthly basis but that's if the quantity of members (including the vendors and shoppers) on the platform is within 1,000 members which it serves efficiently. Aside that, Sharetribe is focused more on creating peer-to-peer marketplaces rather than multi-vendor marketplaces with organized storefronts.

3. WordPress with Marketify and Easy Digital Downloads

WordPress with Marketify - Quick Review
With Marketify, you can build any digital marketplace you want. The software is built to support WordPress. Marketify easily allow authors to create accounts and list their products. Buyers can then purchase products and immediately have access to downloads. The theme integrates with Easy Digital Downloads to create multi-vendor marketplaces for digital products.

Advantages

• Very affordable
• Performs most basic vendors’ needs

Disadvantages

• You don’t create your own products—only sellers do
• You have to buy all sorts of various plugins to make it work
• Supports mostly selling softwares or digital products unlike others that support both digital and physical goods

Summary
WordPress with Marketify is a good choice for those who has lean budget for creating their marketplace, but this also means a lot of limited features

4. Magento with Marketplace

Magento Marketplace Quick review
Magento Marketplace is developed and brought online by Webkul, the developer company also provides versions for WordPress, Shopify and other CMS platforms. This one is also quite more robust than Marketify. It's actually an extension that helps you build your own marketplace for vendors or yourself. Magento Marketplace can handle both physical and digital products. Vendors can specify whether their product is physical or digital when they create a product listing

Advantages

• Magento Marketplace has slightly better search functionality than Marketify out-of-the-box.
• Customers can search by keyword and then sort by category, price, relevance, and name

Disadvantages

• Add-ons/Plugins are often required
• You have to buy all sorts of various plugins to make it work

Summary
Marketplace in conjunction with Magento is another good Marketplace builder that does a good deal for vendor business owners, it's also quite similar to WordPress with Marketify that was already reviewed up here in this article.

5. KREEZALID

Kreezalid Marketplace builder - Quick Review
Do you want to go into Selling Products, Rentals or Services? For Merchants or Peer to Peer?

Whether you want to sell new jewelry from multiple vendors or just used parts for motorcycle enthusiasts, Kreezalid Marketplace builder solution fits all types of new and used community marketplaces with easily adaptable plug-ins.


Advantages

• No coding required
• Supports English and French languages
• Customizable
• Quick setup
• Responsive design
• You can start your free trial, there is no risk and no credit card is required.

Disadvantages

• The features are quite limited
• Works for small scale business vendors
• A good number of Add-ons/Plugins required often

Summary
Kreezalid comes last in the list because their user interface is a bit poor and they're still gaining ground in building marketplaces for their users, although there are some improvements to be done, the Marketplace builder has potential to become better as they're already serving lots of vendors.

 

CONCLUSION

From the reviews of the 5 most popular eCommerce Marketplace builders, Sharetribe, Magento with Marketplace, WordPress with Marketify and Kreezalid all offer simple interface and a bunch of nice features and solutions for vendors at basic prices, as said earlier, this can also mean that performance will be limited with some of them unlike CS-Cart Multi-Vendor that steps further for vendors by providing an all-in-one package for the marketplace owners and marketplace vendors. All of them offer free trial for 7-14 days, meanwhile CS-Cart Multi-Vendor offers 30 days trial.

Also, multi-vendor business owners can deduce from this article that a larger number of great functions means a higher price for a software, hence it's obvious and understandable that CS-Cart takes the lead at that.

However, whether you're considering price or not, it's important to take and weigh the advantages, disadvantages and flexibility of a marketplace builder software you choose for your multi-vendor marketplace and the kind of business you want to run with it.

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5 Simple Ways to use SEO for Customer Acquisition

SEO means a lot of things to many people, but most of its meaning is embedded in customer acquisition, which every business owner needs to keep growing as a brand. While SEO might hint at areas like Serpbook, keyword analysis, link building and user experience, SEO keenly focuses on attracting relevant organic traffic and equally to identify the channels that bring in qualified leads.

Typically, SEO is gaining massive popularity for its ability to reveal newer techniques on how to increase likeability and visibility online. Fortunately, this article covers 5 simple ways that anyone can use SEO for customer acquisition:

Keyword Research

This is a well-known SEO concept that has widely been used to improve ranking in search engines.

What you did not know is that keyword research plays a major role in attracting new customers to your site. Finding new keywords for a website’s pages and using them in the content will draw more traffic to your website, some of which is by audiences that are not aware of your brand.

Ideally, keywords will help you feature relevantly in search engines positioning yourself as a solution to people’s searches, which also captures a new customer base.

Tip: Instead of relying on your main keywords, use long-tail keywords, which carry more weight, simply to boost conversions by targeting search queries that will actually end in sales.

 ALSO READ -  SEO as a Tool to Your Website Success

 

Boost the user experience to your site

Studies conducted have shown that a good user experience plays a huge role in affecting a customer’s willingness to be a loyal advocate. Your main goal should be to build credibility and strong relationships with your current audience-base so that they can convert to your advocates.

With an impeccable user experience, click-through rates will increase as well as cut down on exit rates that might be causing your traffic instability.

Improve the content Experience

Your content is the whole reason you have an audience, and therefore you should be able to provide them adequate value for their time, which is the number one reason you should engage in a lot of content research to remain up-to-date with the trending topics in your industry. 

Ensure you create highly shareable content that is relevant to your industry of operation and is properly structured to address the needs of your audience, but more importantly, generates content that can evoke emotions and provoke conversations and other types of feedback from people. 

Every once in a while, consider repurposing content to increase the content experience, and even try the skyscraping technique. Develop different types of content that will boost the rate at which people share your content as well as increase the number of click-throughs which stand to positively affect the flow of organic traffic on your site. 

Use social media

Today, almost everyone is using social media, which means a huge part of the people you are trying to reach out to are on social media.

Determine the most favorable social media platforms for your type of business and work on sharing your content on those platforms. Remember to integrate the different social media icons on your website linked to all the social media platforms you are on.

While at it, develop and build relationships with important persons in your industry that will get you the right kind of attention. An unknown fact is that the social media users with few followers can champion your brand and turn to be loyal advocates that can attract an even higher audience-base.

Typically, social media platforms work differently, so be sure to create messages relevant and unique for the different platforms, and focus more on impressions rather than followers that do not necessarily determine your audience reach.

Actively participate in forum marketing

Forums are a great way for business owners and customers share their ideas and views with each other, by sharing useful information where potential customers can discuss your services or products, or those that are similar to yours.

Read what your competitors post and see what connections they have so that you are better placed at analyzing what you can do to improve your site or product to attract such a liking. Consider posting on these forums to answer people’s questions and build relationships with them, rather than push your products and services.

Either way, the chosen tactics should be justified by the findings or results you uncover at the end of it all, measured by the behavior of the director organic traffic on your site.

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How to be Eligible for Sending & Receving Payoneer funds

This article guide will show you all you need to know about how you can easily activate Payoneer payment services and become eligible to send funds or make local and international payments and also receive funds with your Payoneer accounts.

What is Payoneer?
For those who may not know it yet, we once discussed it here with how to earn $25 bonus with new Payoneer.
Payoneer is one of the best PayPal alternative today, it's used to Send and Receive mass payments with/from or for individuals, small and big companies.

• Whether you are a blogger, business owner, professional or freelancer, Payoneer offers you multiple ways to get paid by your international clients and global marketplaces – quickly, securely and at low cost.  Register for your own Payoneer account here

They also provide debit cards to use anywhere in the world for online payments and for your ATM cash withdrawals (anywhere that supports MasterCard). The Payoneer Debit MasterCard service is awesome.

 

How Do I Sign Up For Payoneer Account?

You can go here now and sign up for your Payoneer account!

Now, back to activating and eligibility for Payoneer payment services for your account.

Activating your Payoneer to Send and Receive Funds

Everyone can Sign up to use Payoneer and recieve money but NOT all accounts are allowed to perform some core Payoneer payment services (especially sending money/funds) like sending payments.

If Payoneer payment service is not open for me, What to do?

We'll explain below and how you can successfully activate your account to send and receive funds in any currency of your choice.

There are two possibilities – you either need to gain eligibility or there is a limitation for your particular account. Let’s look at both scenarios:

Eligibility

• Many Payoneer users receive payments in several currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, etc.). Your account may only be open to make payments from one of these currencies. If you have at least one card or currency balance eligible to make a payment, you will see Pay in the top menu.

• To be eligible for Make a Payment, you must be receiving payments from Payoneer partners or directly from clients (other individual and companies using Payoneer) into your Payoneer account.

• Have you filled out the questionnaire and provided a copy of your photo ID? Sometimes we need just a bit more information about you before we can open the service, so if you haven’t already, be sure to provide this information.

Limitations

• This service may be limited based on partner, country, or industry. For more information, please contact Payoneer Customer Care.

** Most payments take up to 2 hours. In rare cases, the transaction may take up to 2 business days.

This means payments

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How to Add Animated GIFs to Your Stories

Looking at the latest features that has been introduced on Instagram story, you probably know you can add stickers to your stories.
These stickers are interactive but, like real stickers, they don't move ... until now. In a Jan 23 update to the app, more action can be added to your stories with animated GIF stickers.

Instagram teamed up with GIPHY to provide a high-quality, transparent collection of GIFs to all Instagram users.
While the photo app cut ties with the service due to a controversial, racist GIF, GIPHY support is currently reinstated. To sift through such a large volume of GIFs, Instagram built a search feature into GIF stickers, which gives users access to countless options that match whatever location, mood, or event they want to capture. Snapchat's going to be playing catch up on this one — GIF stickers are pure, goofy fun.

Searching For & Adding Live Stickers to Stories

Adding GIFs to stories sounds more complicated than adding stickers, but it's pretty much the same process.

To get started, swipe right or tap your icon under "Stories" to access the story camera as you normally would. Once you take or choose a photo or video, you just tap the smiley-sticker icon in the top-right corner of the display. Among the stickers, you should find the GIF search option on the second sticker page.

You can simply browse the GIF stickers on the screen or you can search for them by name in the handy "Search" field. Just tap there, enter your query, then tap the GIF you want. You can place and resize the GIF on your story like you would any other sticker.

What do you think about GIF stickers? Think you'll use them in your stories? Let us know in the comments below!

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How to use Google Photos on Android & Desktop without downloading the app (PWA)

Google Photos is now available as a Progressive Web App (PWA) on Android devices, so you no longer need to download and install the application on your Android smartphone or tablet before using it. The PWA is also available on desktop through the Google Chrome browser.

A Progressive Web App lives in your browser and allows you to enjoy the features of a native application without actually installing it on your device, which is a huge plus for users of smartphones with low storage capacities.

With this latest development, Google Photos joins other apps like Twitter and Google Maps Go in the growing list of native applications that have PWA versions. PWAs don't have the same adoption rates as native applications yet, but with big players in the smartphone and app industry including support for them by the day, PWAs just might overtake native apps someday, especially on mobile devices.

For now, though, PWAs are still limited in their applications, and they don't offer the full range of functionalities provided by their native counterparts. Google Photos PWA currently doesn't have an offline mode, so you can only use it when you're connected to the internet. You also don't get push notifications yet on Android, but the notifications are available on the desktop version. Other features unavailable on the PWA right now are automatic photo uploads and Share Target support.

How to get Google Photos PWA on Android & Desktop

For both platforms (Android and Desktop), you have to be using the latest Google Chrome browser in order to use Progressive Web Apps. Simply update the browser to version 67 and above, and you're good to go.

For Android

1. Visit photos.google.com in the Google Chrome browser.
2. Click on the three dots at the top right corner of the browser.
   
   
   
3. Select "Add to Home screen".
   
   
   
4. Click on "ADD" on the dialog that appears, and wait for a few seconds for the Google Photos PWA to be added to your home screen.

For Desktop

1. Visit photos.google.com in the Google Chrome browser.
2. Click on the three dots at the top right corner of the browser.
   
   
   
3. Select "Install Google Photos.." from the list of menu options.
   
   
   
4. Click on "Install" on the alert window that appears at the top of the browser.

NOTE: If you can't see the Install Google Photos option on your desktop even after updating to Chrome 67, visit chrome://flags/#enable-desktop-pwas and change the option for Desktop PWAs from Default to Enabled, restart the browser and try again.

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How to get iPhone X-like gesture navigation on any Android smartphone

Gesture navigation is not a new thing on smartphones, Android and iPhones alike, but with the iPhone X came native support and custom gesture navigations. Google is just adding native support for gestures on the upcoming Android P which currently runs on a very small percentage of smartphones, and you have to either be using a custom ROM pre-loaded with the feature or install a third-party application to enable gesture navigation on your device. One of such apps, probably the best of them all, is Navigation Gestures by XDA Developers.

Navigation Gestures does everything almost every other gesture-control app will do for you, but it is unique in that it is the only gesture control app that allows you to completely hide your phone's default navigation bar without requiring root access. If you're not a root user, you'd have to use the navigation bar in conjunction with gestures when using other apps, which doesn't seem so exciting.

Another interesting thing about Navigation Gestures is that it supports a wide range of Android devices, indeed almost any Android smartphone running Android 8 Oreo down to JellyBean (4.2). It, however, doesn't support Android P and higher, which shouldn't be a cause for concern since native support for gestures is being added to Android from that version upwards anyway.

How to get gesture control on any Android smartphone

All you need to do is to head to the Google Play Store and install the Navigation Gestures application. Most gesture controls are enabled by default on the app, but to get some additional gestures for actions like pulling down the notification shade, pulling down quick settings, opening the power menu and media controls, you'd have to install a premium addon for just $0.99, also from the Play Store.

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