The Tech Informant

What is no-code? No-code (with or without a hyphen) simply means programming without the use of code. This includes, but not limited to; webpages, mobile applications, and scripts. New programming languages like Python have made it a little easier to write code, but generally, there is still a steep learning curve. It is also important to note that you may need to learn two or more programming languages for you to entirely design and build a website or mobile application – or spend thousands of dollars hiring or contracting a software engineer. No-code platforms intend to significantly reduce the burden of acquiring technical knowledge of programming languages, and according to statistics, it seems they are succeeding. In 2021, research firm Gartner forecasted a 23% increase in the global market for low-code/no-code development tools. It also projected that over 65% of all mobile application development activities will be through low-code/no-code platforms.  So, how do no-code plat...

What is Salesforce Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that initially only provided customer relationship management (CRM) tools but has over the years expanded into sales, analytics, customer service, and marketing automation. It is now the most popular and most successful software-as-a-service platform in the world. It was founded in 1999, but like most online companies at that time, it was severely affected by the bursting of the dot-com bubble. It suffered crippling financial losses and had to lay off about 20% of its staff. But the company, under its founder, former Oracle executive Mark Benioff persevered and Salesforce put up impressive financial numbers passing 1 billion dollars in annual revenue by 2009. In 2022 the company’s revenue hit 26.49 billion dollars which is a 26% increase from 2021. It also boasts a market cap of 150.25 billion dollars. Not too shabby for a company that almost went under in the first three years of operations. In many ways, especially in th...

What is pig butchering? According to Internet Crime Complaint Center’s press release about online safety, in 2021 ‘pig butchering’ scam victims lost an estimated 429 million dollars. Pig butchering is essentially a long con. Online scammers take their time to establish fake personal relationships with the victims before ripping them off.  The trick is to get the victims to trust the scammers. A con artist usually creates a fake online profile on social media, like Facebook, WhatsApp, or Tinder masquerading as an incorrect number or an old friend. They use these profiles to reach out to thousands of potential victims attempting to be their ‘new friend’ or ‘potential lover’. If the potential victim ignores the scammer then the con ends there with no loss or foul done, but if they are intrigued by the scammer’s lies and continue engaging then they fall right into the scammer's trap. The con artists will then insert themselves into the daily lives of the victims by consistent personal ...

In 2004, a scruffy college kid from Harvard University co-created, in his dorm, what would be the most important networking platform in the next two decades. Considering that it was initially meant to connect university students, Mr. Zuckerberg probably did not know how much of an impact his creation would have on the world. Since 2006 when it was open to anybody above the age of 13, the Facebook co-founder and CEO has steered the company to amass 2.93 billion active monthly users (more than a third of the world’s population) and is ranked the third most visited website globally. In the years since, Facebook acquired the photo-sharing App, Instagram, an instant messaging App, WhatsApp, the virtual reality company Oculus, and Giphy, an online database and search engine for short looping videos. All these platforms have had their share of successes. It has however not been smooth sailing for Facebook (now Meta.) The last eight years have been extremely difficult for the California-based ...

You’ve probably read the horror stories in business journals about the unlikely prospects of startups (and small businesses) making it through their first few years of operation. I was initially not going to make readers cringe with the exact statistics, but I am now convinced that it is important to them at the back of your mind going into this article. They give the title more gravitas.  I hope these three have enough shock value to get you to consider these SaaS tools. 90% of all startups fail eventually. Cash flow problems lead to the downfall of 82% of startups. Only 40% of startups are profitable. Pretty shocking, right? Well then, if you are now wondering why it seems like the cards are stacked unfairly high against startups, that is actually a great segue to our next subheading... Why such a high rate of startup failure? Personally, I blame the internet. But it’s not that simple. Any marketplace can be unforgiving for a startup. First, you have to walk a tightrope balancing...

This might go over the head for baby boomers, but do you remember when the Blackberry phone was the king of smartphones? Do you remember what happened to Blackberry after Apple introduced the first smartphone with no buttons and they refused to evolve? Physical cash appears to be quickly going the way of physical buttons on phones.  A quick snapshot of the number of digital transactions globally and the increasing number of digital currencies and fintech companies battling for a share of the free market pie provides irrefutable proof.  According to www.zippia.com, as of February 2021, there were 68.42 million cryptocurrency wallets worldwide up from 3.16 million in 2015. By July 2022 there were more than 20,000 cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin alone contributes to about 400,000 transactions every day. Although digital currencies are not new, the last decade has especially seen a tremendous leap forward in fintech thanks to smartphone technology and global internet penetration. Thi...

Imagine an actual whale in the ocean. How much water do you think it displaces when it moves? Significantly more water than ordinary fish, right? And sometimes, the amount of water whales displace while moving (picture a whale breaking the surface of the water and then plunging back in) can actually displace or disrupt the movement of other smaller fish, right? Well, that is basically the concept of a crypto whale. In the crypto-universe, whales are individuals or organizations that own massive quantities of a specific cryptocurrency. They hold large enough quantities of a cryptocurrency that they can significantly influence market prices through their trading activity. For example, when a whale decides to buy large quantities of a cryptocurrency, the market equates this to high demand and therefore the price of the cryptocurrency goes up (sometimes very significantly.) The same is true in vice versa. Whales can choose to sell large amounts of cryptocurrencies and the market reads this...