read Function
read function is used to read the string or binary and returned parsed content. It is a very useful function when the reader isn’t able to determine the content type by default.
It takes three parameters:
Articles
What an extraordinary year 2020 has been for the news! From the ongoing coronavirus crisis, to a turbulent US election, to the unrelenting march of Bitcoin, this year like no other we’ve been glued to our phones micro-analyzing every tidbit of news.
Which makes this the perfect time for mediastack, an awesome REST API that allows you to embed a customizable news feed, sourced from the world’s top news agencies, and updated by the minute, right on your site.
Integrating Global News with Your Site
News is the beating pulse of so many global industries. From political decisions that affect stock prices, to natural disasters that interrupt goods and services, to the whims of celebrities who overnight transform brands from unknown to must-have.
Whether you’re building a site for a non-profit in Louisiana that cares deeply about both Washington politics, and hurricanes in the Caribbean; or you’re building an app for a golf course in Halkidiki that’s focused on both local news, and golf around the world; delivering real-time news content to those users elevates UX.
Tightly integrating the news with your site makes it a hub for users hungry for that very news. The only limit is your creativity.
Display Up-to-Date News on Your Site
When news breaks around the world the top networks scramble to catch up; they simply can’t maintain correspondents in every town and city in the world, and so they rely on affiliates. mediastack pulls in news from over 7,500 different sources in over 50 countries worldwide, giving you access to exactly the same affiliates frequently used by big news organizations like CNN, MSNBC, BBC, or ABC.
When it’s one of the big players in news that breaks a story first, mediastack still has you covered because as will as covering smaller, lesser-known sources mediastack delivers real-time news from CBS, Sky News, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, USA Today, and a host of trusted names across the industry.
If your site targets users that are only interested in certain types of story — like sports, or Hollywood celebrities — then you can even pull in stories from ESPN, TMZ, or Fox News.
Get Started Quickly with mediastack
Getting started with mediastack couldn’t be simpler, and there’s a free plan that’s more than enough to prototype your project.
Full documentation is provided with code examples for PHP, Python, jQuery, Go, and Ruby. To start integrating all you need to do is register for a free access key.
Once you have your free access key, you connect to the API, then customize the results you receive with simple parameters. You can specify the types of news, the precise sources (including omitting sources), languages, countries, and most importantly your keywords.
For example here’s how you’d request science news from CNN, but not TMZ:
https://api.mediastack.com/v1/news
?access_key=[ INSERT YOUR ACCESS KEY HERE ]
&categories=science
&sources=cnn,-tmzLet’s say you want to display Spanish language crypto news on your site, it couldn’t be easier:
https://api.mediastack.com/v1/news
?access_key=[ INSERT YOUR ACCESS KEY HERE ]
&categories=business,technology
&languages=es
&search=crypto,bitcoin,btc,xrp,ripple,etherium,altcoinThe API sends back simple JSON data that’s easy to run through. Each news item includes the author, title, description, url, source, image, category, language, country, and a published_at timestamp that records when the story was posted.
Once the feed is setup, sit back and relax. It’s all automated from now on.
The Best Source of News for Your Website
mediastack is delivered by apilayer, quite rightly one of the most trusted names in APIs, and is capable of handling millions of requests simultaneously.
Fast, updated by the minute, highly customizable, reliable, and sourced from the biggest names in the news industry, mediastack is an amazing API.
There’s a free-forever plan that allows you to use the API without charge, for up to 500 API calls per month, that’s perfect for trying it out.
For commercial use, plans start at just $19.99/month, and can handle up to 250,000 calls per month. Commercial plans also include HTTPS encryption, live news delivery, access to historical data, and — should you ever need it — technical support.
Head over to mediastack today, to prepare your site for whatever events 2021 throws at us.
[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of mediastack –]
Since there are so many CMS plugins out there, it can be overwhelming to choose the best ones for your website. We’ve done the research for you; this list contains the top new CMS plugins for November 2020. You’ll find useful plugins for WordPress, Craft, Shopify, and Joomla.
Let’s get started…
WordPress
404 Page Editor
404 Page Editor is a simple WordPress plugin that helps you add custom text to the default 404 page on your website. The plugin comes with seasonal and industry-related 404 templates. One useful feature of the plugin is that it backups your current 404 page before changing it. So you can restore the backup page anytime you choose. The plugin duplicates your current 404.php page to wp-content/uploads/404-page-editor/ so you can easily find it. You can also change the text on the plugin to fit your local dialect.
UnusedCSS Power-Up
Most WordPress themes and plugins load their CSS in the wrong areas of your website. This can slow down your site. A slow website will reduce user experience and lead to increased bounce rates.
UnusedCSS will help reduce the size of your website’s CSS files by up to 95%. The best part is that the plugin works automatically. It will remove any unused CSS when visitors view any page on your website. UnusedCSS will automatically reduce your website’s load times by reducing your CSS files and page size. The plugin also optimizes the performance of other WordPress plugins and extensions. UnusedCSS also works with WooCommerce themes and plugins.
Simple Redirects
Simple Redirects is a WordPress plugin that helps you to automatically redirect requests to another page on your site or any other place on the web. The plugin allows you to easily redirect users from your old web pages to new pages using 301 or 302 redirects. You don’t have to worry about losing backlinks or page rank. Any incoming links to the old web page will be automatically passed along to the new page. The page rank on the old page is also transferred to the new page. The plugin is useful when migrating a WordPress site when don’t want to retain the URL structure.
HTML Validation
HTML Validation plugin helps you identify any HTML validation errors on your website. The plugin works automatically in the background of your website and will send you regular reports. There is a progress bar on the report screen to show you the progress of the scan. The plugin uses WordPress Cron to scan the content of your website. There is also an option for the plugin to automatically fix any HTML validation issues on your website. You can also choose to fix the issues manually.
Just Highlight
Just Highlight is a simple WordPress plugin that helps you highlight text in your posts or pages. You can use this plugin to highlight any portion of the page you want to draw the reader’s attention to. You can highlight the background of the page and also add animation to the highlighted text. In the WordPress admin area, you can change the speed and color of the animation. The plugin is compatible with Gutenberg, and the WordPress classic editor.
DeviantArt Embed
DeviantArt Embed is a simple plugin that helps you embed any work from Deviant Art into a post. The plugin provides a block for the WordPress block editor so you can easily embed the image. It uses a DeviantArt oEmbed API to pull the images and their descriptions, and creates an embedded image.
Static Optimizer
Static Optimizer is a static file optimization plugin that serves and optimizes static files on your website. The plugin will help you increase your website speed by automatically compressing your static files. It is easy to set up, you just need an API key to get started. Other useful features that the plugin offers include automatic JS and CSS minification, automatic image optimization, and processing of responsive images. You don’t have to worry about losing your files if their server is down. The plugin automatically backs up your files and will load your original files when their servers are down (either because of an upgrade, maintenance, or outage). By default, only images are compressed when you activate the plugin; you can also choose to optimize fonts, CSS, and JS files.
RankBear
RankBear is a keyword rank tracker plugin that helps you analyze your SEO efforts. With RankBear, you can track the keywords for each of the posts and pages on your site. While the plugin has a paid plan, you can track up to five keywords for free. On the free plan, you will receive weekly reports on each keyword you are tracking. You can search for the rank and volume of a keyword in every location supported by the Google search engine. RankBear is a lightweight software-as-a-service plugin hosted by Amazon Cloud Services. The plugin also offers the option to download the keyword reports to CSV.
Table of Contents Block
Table of Contents Block is a plugin that allows you to easily create a Table of Contents for your WordPress posts. The plugin is lightweight and will automatically add a Table of Content in your website’s posts and pages. You can select the heading tags you want to add to the Table of Content. It also has a dedicated support team to assist you. The plugin works fine with all standard WordPress themes.
Markease For WooCommerce
Markeaze is an all-in-one communication plugin that allows you to add live chat to your online stores. The plugin will help you improve your customer service by decreasing your response times. With the plugin, you can collect your visitor’s contact information via a widget. This feature is useful in building a subscriber database. You can also use the plugin to track customer behavior on your site, inform customers about new products, help customers with active orders, and collect customer feedback. You can also use the auto-reply function to answer commonly asked questions.
Craft CMS
Image Toolbox
Image Toolbox is a Craft CMS plugin that offers image-related tools for your templates. The plugin will automatically create a WebP variant of the images you upload. It also has a fallback for browsers that do not support WebP images. Other useful features the plugin offers include automatic creation of placeholder images and generation of responsive images with multiple variants. The plugin also supports Imager-X (or old Imager).
Element Panel
Element Panel plugin allows you to add elements and an eager-loading panel to the debug toolbar. This feature will help you benchmark your templates in Craft CMS. For elements, the panel has a dashboard that shows how many elements are populated. It also shows how many elements are duplicates. The plugin also shows you how many eager-loading elements are detected. Duplicate elements are grouped by field name.
Shopify
VStore Shoppable Videos
VStore Shoppable Videos is a Shopify plugin that allows your customers to shop directly from your videos. The plugin allows you to embed your products into any video. Since videos have a high engagement rate, this plugin will significantly improve your store’s conversion rates.
ProofMotion Video Testimonials
ProofMotion Video Testimonials plugin helps you to easily collect video testimonials. The plugin sends an automated email or SMS requests to customers asking for their satisfaction feedback after making a purchase. The responses are analyzed to determine whether the customer had a negative or positive experience. Customers that offer negative feedback are sent to customer care to help them with the problem they encountered. Happy customers are prompted to make video testimonials of their positive shopping experience. ProofMotion guides the customer through the interview so they can give the best testimonial. They also offer an on-site widget so you can easily share your testimonials.
Real ID
Real ID is a Shopify plugin that allows you to verify customers’ real identity using a photo ID and facial biometrics. The plugin is perfect for orders that have an age restriction, verifying flagged fraud goods, and selling expensive goods. Real ID will help you identify whether a government-issued-ID is fake during fulfilment. All the customer needs to do is take a selfie on their phone. This way, even if a customer has access to a stolen physical ID, they won’t still be able to make any purchase. The plugin can verify documents such as passports, visas, national IDs, driver licenses, and more. Real ID will help you handle GDPR compliance. The plugin is available in hundreds of countries around the world.
Joomla
Accessibility
Accessibility is a Joomla plugin that allows your website visitors to easily access your website content. The plugin will remove any barrier between the visitor and your Joomla site. There is no coding required and you can customize the plugin directly from the module manager. The plugin has a useful feature called Dyslexic Readability; this feature allows your visitors to set the entire document font to a dyslexic-friendly font. Visitors can also grayscale the page, resize the fonts, and resize the word space. From the backend module, you can add any custom CSS and JS. The plugin is also available in 12 different languages.
Reading Time
Reading Time is a simple plugin that will help you easily show the reading time of your Joomla articles. The plugin is easy to set up and does not require any coding. You can customize every parameter, including the text, in minutes. You can also choose to exclude categories, articles, and menu items. Reading Time also allows you to easily add custom CSS code from the plugin parameters.
Featured image via Pexels.
This month’s collection of new tools, resources, and freebies for designers is a smorgasbord of sorts. You’ll find everything from useful APIs to icons to tutorials to fonts.
Let’s get right into it, here’s what new for designers this month:
Tooltip Sequence
Now that your app or website is ready, you might need to help users engage with it. Tooltip Sequence is a simple JavaScript package that helps you create a series of small tooltips that will guide users through product features with a small description of what they need to know. It looks great and the best part is this tool saves you from having to create each tooltip description manually on each page and link them together.
Serenade
Serenade allows you to free up your hands with voice coding technology. Use natural speech and stay productive with this tool that allows you to code without typing. It works across multiple coding languages and platforms. It’s as easy as “add function hello” and the tool knows what syntax to use.
Gazepass
Gazepass, which is still in beta, is a nifty API that allows for passwordless multi-factor authentication for any website or mobile app. It uses biometrics on any device or platform to make getting into apps or websites easier for users.
Filters.css
Filters.css is a CSS-only library to apply color filters to website images. Installation only takes three steps and includes a variety of filers, such as blur, grayscale, brightness, contrast, invert, saturate, sepia, and opacity.
Sidebar Webring
Sidebar Webring is a collection of blogs and websites that are focused on web design. The curated list is handpicked for superb content for designers and developers. But, what’s a webring? It’s a collection of linked websites in a circular structure that are organized around a theme. The term is a throwback to the early days of the web in the 1990s and 2000s.
Wicked Templates
Wicked Templates is a set of responsive HTML templates made with Bulma and Tailwind CSS that you can style and use as you wish. Use these templates to jumpstart projects. Free and paid options available.
WP Umbrella
WP Umbrella will help you keep sites running in a healthy and safe manner on WordPress. Monitor uptime and performance, PHP errors, and keep up with hundreds of websites from one dashboard.
Servicebot
Servicebot helps you create customer-facing embeddable billing pages that work with Stripe payments. This premium tool is quite user-friendly and works with websites or SaaS.
Custom, Accessible Checkboxes with Perfect Alignment
Create custom, accessible checkboxes with perfect alignment every time. This walkthrough shows you how to use CSS to align elements and labels.
Sombras.app
Sombras.app is a nifty tool that creates 3D object shadows. Use the easy on-screen controls to get just the right orientation and shape.
urlcat
Urlcat is a tiny JavaScript library that helps you build URLs with dynamic parameters and without mistakes. The friendly API has no dependencies, includes TypeScript types, and is just 0.8KB minified and gzipped.
Reacher
Reacher is a real-time email verification API that lets you check the validity of an address before you send the email. Reduce bounce rates in an instant. (The personal version is free.)
Swell
Swell is a most powerful headless ecommerce platform for modern brands, startups, and agencies. Create fast and flexible shopping experiences with the API and headless storefront themes. This is a premium tool but does have a free trial.
No Code Founders 2.0
No Code Founders 2.0 is a platform for discovering the latest startups built with no-code and the tools used to build them. Browse startups, tools, perks, interviews, jobs, meetups, posts, and more as part of the no-code movement. The community engages on Slack and requires an email to sign up.
How to Pick More Beautiful Colors for Your Data Visualizations
Beautiful color choices will make your data visualizations that much more impactful. This tutorial by Lisa Charlotte Rost will help you make better color choices on the way to better infographics and charts. Plus, it’s well developed, designed, and packed with useful information.
IconPark
IconPark is a collection of more than 1,200 high-quality icons with an interface that allows you to customize them. It uses a single SVG source file that can be transformed into multiple themes. The library includes cross-platform components and is free to use.
Mono Icons
Mono Icons is a simple and consistent open-source icon set that uses mono spacing. The collection includes 136 icons.
BGJar
BGJar is a free SVG background generator for digital projects. Pick a category and customize the result to fit your project or needs.
HitCount
HitCount is almost too simple to be true. This tiny tool lets you add a hit counter to your website that’s as easy as adding an image. Copy the code and make any customizations you want. Then paste it to your design. That’s it!
Blacklight
Blacklight is a real-time website privacy inspector. The tool by Surya Mattu scans any website you enter in the scan bar and shows what user-tracking technologies are used on the website. This allows you to see who might be gathering data about your visit.
Alter
Alter is a customizable – and experimental – three-dimensional typeface that you can experiment with. It’s as fun to play with as use.
Autobus Omnibus
Autobus Omnibus is a simple all capitals font with new wave styling. The character set has 96 glyphs that are perfect for display use.
Deathmatch
Deathmatch is a seasonal blackletter font that’s ideal for the upcoming Halloween holiday. The character set includes plenty of options and there’s a full version (paid) for commercial use.
Futura Now
Futura Now is a premium typeface and update to a font you may already know and love. The new version has 107 styles in a massive family.
Pumpkin Soup
Pumpkin Soup is a fun almost handwriting style typeface with a cartoonish vibe. It includes a regular and italic style and is most appropriate in limited use.
Though I have worked on Java for more than a decade, I have not had a chance to work on Groovy. While working for API Integration into Jenkins CI/CD pipeline, I extensively used Groovy to invoke REST API, validate the user input parameters, and business logic for that. After that, I found that Groovy is a fascinating program language for Java developers.
Why Is Groovy Easy for Java Developers?
It allows to use the Java syntax liberally and tries to be as natural as possible for Java developers. It is an object-oriented dynamic programming language for Java virtual machine (JVM) and can be integrated smoothly with any Java Program. The groovy syntax is lucid, familiar, and direct that makes to develop projects faster and easier. It demands a shorter learning curve for Java Developer to develop, test, and integrate to make production-ready code in a short span.
HUAWEI Account Kit offers very simple, quick, and secure sign-in and authorization functionalities which help developers to implement hassle-free and quick sign-in functionalities for applications.
HUAWEI Account Kit offers services on different parameters as
You have probably heard about an innovative language model called GPT3. The hype is so overwhelming that we decided to research its core and the consequences for the tech players. Let’s explore whether the language deserves this much attention and what makes it so exceptional.
What Is GPT-3? Key Facts
GPT-3 is a text generating neural network that was released in June 2020 and tested for $14 million. Its creator is the AI research agency OpenAI headed by Sam Altman, Marc Benioff, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman.
The language is based on 175 million parameters and is by far more accurate than its predecessors. For example, GPT-2 had only 1.5 billion of parameters, and Microsoft Turing NLG – 17 billion of them. Thus, the power of GPT-3 is significantly surpassing the alternatives.
The Builder Pattern is extremely popular in Java applications. Unfortunately, it’s often misunderstood and incorrectly applied, which results to runtime errors.
Let’s remember the purpose of Builder: set only necessary fields in some object and keep remaining fields set to default values. For example, if we’re preparing a configuration object, then it’s convenient to change only the necessary parameters and keep other parameters set to default values.
A brief and practical guide to the most important/interesting new features/changes coming with Python 3.8 (code name – walrus – joking :) ). So, first let’s announce the news:
Python 3.8 was released on October 14th, 2019.
