Tech Assessment

If you think about it, your business is actually a community of sorts. And, if you do it right, your brand can create a community of ardent followers. If it thrives, you can expect tremendous business growth.

Creating a viral, self-sustaining strategy

Companies like Google and Facebook are open sourcing their core platform libraries for people on GitHub. Not only does GitHub, the largest open source community in the world, allow these companies to boost their tech credibility but it also fosters innovation by getting the best programmers to drive innovation.

Although open source may not be a business model on its own, it is great for improving user adoption and market value. Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner, said, “Gaining a competitive advantage has emerged as a significant reason for adopting an OSS (open source software) solution, suggesting that users are beginning to look at OSS differently–if they can customize the code to make it unique to their company, they have created a competitive advantage.”

Let’s look at a few examples of how Google communities are changing the world while moving its business ahead. Google Product forums connect their product teams with actual users. The community conversations spawn new product features; they are also helping forums where participants ask questions and exchange advice. Google Translate Community invites polyglots to translate or validate existing translations; the company’s paid-version API is available to companies who require multi-lingual support. Contributors to Google Local Guides, a community-driven program, help others (and Google) by reviewing places they have been to. These guides impact navigation with the information and photos they share.

When it comes to new technologies, developer communities hold the key to enabling businesses. Google engages with the developer community via its developer programs—Google Developer Groups (to engage with a wide range of developers for new platform adoption and demand generation), Google Developers Experts (to identify people who are strong in a few technologies and make them engage with local communities rather than them putting Googlers all across the map), and Google Business Groups (to help SMEs).

Companies such as HackerEarth and HackerRank also nurture developer communities. They connect skilled programmers and tech companies looking to source top talent to drive product innovation. This translates into appreciable savings in terms of hiring efforts, time, and money, that is, better returns in the future for companies who sign up for their offerings. For example, HackerEarth has a community of over a million programmers. Their participation helps companies drive innovation and talent management on the platform.

Building a positive feedback loop

There is no better way to drive your business forward than happy customers who become advocates, helping you get more potential promoters. For example, studies show that glowing customer recommendations on Twitter can increase business for that brand by about 50%.

How do companies attract and retain customer loyalty, differentiate in a highly competitive market, and get customers to be brand advocates? Community! Their community teams focus on the customer. They listen to the customer. They create amazing social experiences that encourage customer interactions. And they know that quality, authenticity, and respect are the cornerstones of any successful community strategy.

You have mobile phone companies such as OnePlus and Xiaomi. They, leverage their community forums and social media to create a huge buzz during product launches, consequently investing much lesser, and sometimes even zero dollars, on advertising. These communities offer loads of product feedback as well. Their user communities do it all in exchange for product invites, merchandise, and invites to exclusive events. Building close-knit communities or tech evangelists have clearly propelled business for these Chinese companies.

Putting together a branded online community

A branded community is an example of co-creation where the company and the consumers create and find value. “A brand community is a community with a specific business objective lead by an executive sponsor, where a company creates a space for people with a common sense of identity to participate in ongoing, shared experiences.”

Why do companies need a branded online community?

• Retention and customer satisfaction
• Product feedback/ideation for the future/review beta products
• Enhance brand awareness, credibility, and exposure
• Generate revenue
• Create a cost-effective, simple marketing channel
• Support brand advocates
• Less investment in support staff and call centers
• Cross-promotion

An oft-quoted example of a branded community propelling business is Austria-based Red Bull through relevant social and digital campaigns. Synonymous with adventure, the energy drink company “got its wings” through strategic sponsorships (motor, alpine, and extreme sports) and celebrity endorsements, pull marketing strategies through interesting, emotional and authentic content, and attracting customers through quality merchandise. By glorifying everything that’s visible and not mainstream, Red Bull’s community of student entrepreneurs has fortified the brand’s perception by millennials through creative and daring initiatives across campuses. (Read how top community managers ensure that they have a thoroughly engaged audience via social platforms.)

Thriving on user-generated content

At times, a community of people creates the value while the business creates a platform. For example, Airbnb, Feastly, Lyft, and Duolingo, which have user-generated community strategies, are scaling rapidly. For instance, using amazing storytelling to “sell an experience” and great social campaigns driving fan engagement, Airbnb, an online marketplace, and hospitality service, set the sharing economy’s P2P marketplace model rolling. With more than 800,000 listings in about 200 countries, disruptive Airbnb could well ensure that the company will make $3.5 billion a year by 2020. With Duolingo, which is an online language-learning tool, the community helps in translation (that’s how it earns revenue), beta testing, and development of new course content via the Incubator.

Tools such as Jive and Higher Logic offer cloud-based community platforms for external engagement. Research shows that companies using online communities can expect 94% customer retention, 54% drive in revenue growth, and 88% increased web traffic. Whereas, Wells Fargo and NASA are keen on building internal communities for value creation; this is still in comparatively nascent stages.

Social has changed almost everything

According to 2014 study of online communities by Demand Metric and DNN, close to 20% of the participants reported that their online branded community impacted over 30% of the company revenues. And, data revealed these additional insights — in online communities that influence 16% or more of revenue, 64% have strong community engagement, 54% use intermediate or advanced metrics, and 69% have executive teams that are highly involved in the community.

Community engagement is a key ROI metric. Social platforms such as Instagram, Imgur, and others have strong community teams that work on engagements with users over and outside their platform. Instagram Co-founder Mike Krieger said, “What distinguishes us is a community. Staying tuned in is really the key. From the beginning, our very first hire – this is, like, against every business textbook [and everyone else in the business world’s advice] of hiring engineers, [and] like, maybe hir[ing] some designers and PMs. We hired a community manager first…” He attributes much of the photo-sharing platform’s stupendous success to the community. Imgur is an another platform completely driven by viral images which are again contributed by its community.

Product discovery platforms, such as Wooplr, Product Hunt, and Influenster, help businesses grow through community-driven curation; a close-knit community hunts for and reviews products to up sales and brand awareness. This is the sole form of content Product Hunt generates. (Ryan, the CEO of the company, has shared some thoughts here.)

According to CMX, the SPACE model defines how businesses can drive value through communities.

If you are customer-facing business, you need a community. You need to continuously nurture that connection with your consumers. This you do for gathering feedback on products or services (e.g. UserVoice), acting as support forums for queries/complaints (e.g. Uber uses Zendesk), and designing effective customer acquisitions and retention campaigns (e.g. HootSuite uses Influitive). Or, the community is your business. Either way, they are inextricably connected.

Conclusion

Businesses can’t sustain without connections. And what is a community but a bunch of valuable connections? For smaller businesses, especially, the decentralized, sustainable, and scalable concept of “community” can build trusted relationships with people who share their goals, thereby boosting business.

Community members soldier on, fueled by passion, to build new things and create an impact for people and organizations. There’s a reason community of fans such as Lego Ideas, HOG, and Made Unboxed flourish. They are indisputable social engines to power business growth; perhaps a community is one of the most vital corporate assets to help create lifetime value.

Hope you enjoyed reading, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section down below. More content to follow around building great community, so stay tuned!

“Just keep it simple, silly!”

It is often both exciting and intimidating while starting to learn new stuff, but it is also the only way to keep us updated, with one foot in the future.

Although there is so much of frenzy around Mixed Reality these days, there are really very few developers currently working on AR/VR.

While there already is a lot of shortage of tech talent worldwide, the scales of demand and supply are even more skewed in this particular category.

Here is all that you need to know to start building your first application for Virtual Reality:

Start by Exploring

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Before you sit down and start developing, you’ll need to know a little bit about the ecosystem itself and the scope of the technology in the current landscape. You do that by spending enough time exploring new applications and following relevant industry insiders, developers, and media channels who are already neck deep in the stuff and listen to what they have to say.

For more information on getting started with virtual reality, go here.

Get your tools right

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Don’t worry about having the latest and most expensive VR Gear in the beginning. Just get yourself a $10 Google Cardboard; that’ll be enough to get you started. Also, do not download the latest version of Unity or Google VR as they usually come with several bugs and need a lot of fixing which at the beginning might leave you stumped. Go for the most stable build out there.

The most stable build at the time of publishing of this article is:
Unity3d 5.4.2: Unity – Get Unity – Download Archive
Google VR 1.03: Google VR SDK for Unity

(To download GVR 1.03: Go to the above link. Then, click on “33 commits” under where it says Google VR SDK for Unity and above where it says Branch: master.

Where it says GVR Unity SDK v1.0.3, click on the “< >” button on the far right. That takes you to a version of the repository from a previous date, v1.0.3 in this case.

Finally, click on the green “Clone or download button” and select Download Zip.

*It’ll be a big file of size around 800 MB, but you’ll just need the Unity package which is about 50 MB; you’ll have to download the complete file though, then delete the rest of it later.)

Form a routine

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You might have classes or a job, but if you don’t take some time out every day, then with each day that you don’t get hands on the tools, it will push you back a lot and the next time you open the tools, you might have a hard time figuring out where you left. You might have to start all over again!

What I did and what I recommend is committing at least half an hour each day to familiarizing yourself with the gaming engine you’re working on whether you are able to make significant progress each day or not.

Also, so that you don’t lose focus and interest along the way, I suggest you form a small group of 3–5 friends who are also interested in the space on Whatsapp, Facebook, or wherever you like and make it a point to share at least one article that you come across each day in that group. It will force you to develop a habit of reading something related every day. Do it even if nobody else seems to be participating.

Practice, Practice, Practice

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This is a no brainer; most development on VR depends on how well you know your gaming engine (Unity in this case) and a little bit of programming. And no matter what you think you’ll typically have to put in at least 40–50 hours of productive time on getting a hang of these tools before you can really start building your own stuff. A lot of tutorials are available online which will guide you while making your first application without much of a background.

I suggest that you read as many tutorials as you can to understand these tools. You will be deceiving yourself if you believe that you’ve got the hang of the tools the first time you follow the tutorial and what you create will actually work. You’ll soon discover that it will be hard for you to recall any of it a day or two later, Don’t pull out your hair if your application doesn’t come up as they taught in the tutorial, as what’ll happen most of the time is you’ll have different machines, different SDKs, and different versions of packages that you’ll be using. So, it will be only natural if something doesn’t work quite as it does in the tutorial.

Combinatory Approach

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Do what you know. After spending some time on the tutorials, you’ll have learned a couple of tricks and will be comfortable implementing some of the functionalities really well. Just focus on that and nothing else. Don’t go into your first project with a specific idea. ?Learn what you can do and design an application around that. Don’t let a specific idea bog you down. Remember this, your first project is supposed to be something of a disaster, and there is no shame in accepting that. You’ll get only better from there.

Start small

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Learn that complex applications are made with huge teams over a long duration. Starting off the first time, you might not necessarily have the correct frame of reference of how long it is going to take you to build stuff, so don’t plan any project which you think is going to take more than a couple of weeks. For example, if you’re building a game like Mario, then do so by stripping all the unnecessary items like keeping it to just one level only without any enemies to dodge or points to collect and other additional conditions; just focus on the minimum number of things that will make it work, say, setting the environment and making your player jump and move. You’ll be surprised that the first time around even this is going to take you a huge amount of time. You can always add things later on. Your first application is going to take you an amount of time that is cumulative of all the practice time that you put in and even more. But just stick to it and your routine; it is a part of the process and don’t be afraid to write a little bit of code. If you design it right, you’ll need to do very little of coding anyway to get anything done.

Don’t worry about making it look pretty; worry about it working at all

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When you are just getting started, you’ll want to go in with the idea of everything being perfect. Just make a note that it is anyway going to be time consuming and also difficult the first time, so do not waste your energy trying to make it look good, just keep striving toward making it work at all. The first ever VR application that I built on my own was very rudimentary, yet it took me about a month to build it, and a lot of time was spent figuring out small details. When you get started, you’ll realize that most of the time it will be the small stuff that keeps you from moving ahead. Sometimes, things won’t work because a library that you’re working on doesn’t exist anymore or because an update in the SDK makes a lot of what you’ve done irrelevant. This is part of the process as well, allowing you to learn the details of the process of building.

Here is the link of the application that I built:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Pratham.ShootemVR

The project it open source, use it to learn and build if you want to. Here is the link to the assets: https://github.com/pratham2504/Shoot-em-VR

Set milestones

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Even though it sounds obvious, you’ll be surprised how easy is it to let days go by without getting much stuff done. Setting small daily milestones will help. Don’t wait if you are not making progress; just ask around or in sometime you’ll convince yourself that it is not working and just quit. Use forums and repositories such as Stackoverflow or Unity Community resources or just ask people at random who’s working on similar things. Most of the time, you’ll find help.

Just remember, anything worth doing is a struggle but if you stick to it, you’ll eventually get there.

And have fun while learning and building cool stuff. You’ll be glad when you show what you built to your friends for the first time even if it may not look all that pretty.

Excited about VR?

Register at the UnitedByHCl hackathon
Happy mixing reality!

To satisfy our voracious appetite for economical, easily-programmable, and open source hardware to bring our imagination to life, technology giants such as Broadcom, Intel, Texas Instruments, Samsung, and Qualcomm have come up with their own single- board computers. But none of them were successful in replacing Raspberry Pi.

Recently, Asus, the Taiwanese chip major, recently launched its own single-board computer “Tinker Board.”



Raspberry Pi vs. Tinker Board - A battle of super boards

Raspberry Pi 3 comes with 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 based Broadcom BCM2837 quad-core processor at 1.2GHz, whereas Tinker Board comes with a slightly powerful processor, a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A17 based Rockchip RK3288 quad-core at 1.8GHz.

The GPU of Tinker Board is more powerful than Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU used in Raspberry Pi 3. The Tinker Board comes with Rockchip RK3288's ARM Mali-T764 graphics core with full H.264 4K video decode capability, whereas Raspberry Pi 3 has a standard HD output.

The Asus Tinker Board supports 192K/24-bit audio sample rates, whereas the Raspberry Pi 3 is just able to handle 48K/16-bit.

The Tinker Board has 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM which is twice that of Raspberry Pi 3. The board from Asus comes with an integrated full-speed Gigabit Ethernet port, which is a significant boost over the Raspberry Pi's 100Mb LAN. Similar to Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, integrated connectivity options such as 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4 are available on Tinker Board.

Like you see in Raspberry Pi 3, Tinker Board also has the following features:

• Built-in WiFi
• 4 USB ports
• 1 HDMI 2.0
• 1 MicroSD card slot
• 40 GPIO pins
• A 3.5mm audio jack
• 1 Micro USB for power

The Asus Tinker Board supports Debian Linux and KODI (formerly called XBMC or Xbox Media Center) with its slick media streaming interface.

Undoubtedly Asus Tinker Board has better specs than Raspberry Pi 3. But Tinker Board loses when it comes to pricing. Raspberry Pi 3 is priced at $35, whereas Tinker Board is priced at $68.

But how do the benchmark metrics look?





Undoubtedly, the Asus Tinker Board wins in specs and performance metrics, but does that mean Raspberry Pi 3 is going lose ground to Tinker Board? I don’t think so because it's not just specs that made Raspberry Pi a revolutionary product, but it is more than that:

Support by the Raspberry Pi team: Active support by the Raspberry Pi foundation has created a sufficient knowledge base which builds enough trust among the developers to consider it for their DIY projects.

Vast user base: Raspberry Pi has a very engaged and innovative user base of makers or DIY enthusiasts because of which there is always a new project / hack every day.

Availability: Raspberry Pi has widespread and continued availability of supporting hardware.

In the early days of Raspberry Pi, the creators thought that they would be able to sell 10,000 units in its lifetime. But the Raspberry Pi foundation has sold more than a million units.

I don't see the adoption of Raspberry Pi dipping any time soon, do you?

The war for tech talent is on. Are you prepared?

"If you hire a single one of these people that means war."

Wrote Steve Jobs to Sergey Brin when Google allegedly tried to poach members of Apple's Safari team. The tech talent war has always existed. Now, it has intensified and is about to get worse.

Hey! I am not a tech company. Why should I be worried? If this is what you’re thinking, well, think again.

The world leader in mobile payments is neither Apple nor Samsung. It is Starbucks! Yes, Starbucks, the coffeehouse chain. According to Mckinsey, today's cars have 100 million lines of programming codes. A startup that delivers medical marijuana is a buzzing startup in the Silicon Valley.

What does it take to win the digital war?

If you are a boy scout at heart and want to be prepared, then your first step should be to equip yourself with the right tech team. If the enemy’s army is standing at your gates, shouldn’t you have started building your army a long time ago? Like 6 months ago.

If digital revolution is a war, then your kickass tech team is your anti-aircraft defense.

It does not matter whether you sell coffee, cars, or medical marijuana. You are either digitally connected to customers or you are losing to someone else. The scary part is that you may not even know who your competitor is!

If you concur with this notion, then this article has served its purpose. If you are still not sure about how hiring a tech team will help your company, you may want to continue reading.

I am still skeptical, how did the world's largest coffeehouse chain become the world leader in mobile payments beating all the tech titans? There are two parts to this story, the well-known story and the one that was orchestrated behind the scenes.

The well-known story

In 2013, Q3 earnings conference, Howard Schultz (Chairman and CEO, Starbucks) said,

“No single competency is enabling us to elevate the Starbucks brand more than our global leadership in mobile, digital, and loyalty. Starbucks is a clear leader in mobile payments and we are encouraged by how consumers have embraced mobile apps as a way to pay.”

In 2009, Starbucks rolled out its first mobile card app in 16 stores in Seattle. This app allowed its customers find the nearest stores, order online, pay via mobile, and collect reward points. It was an instant hit. Soon Starbucks rolled the app out in other states, nationwide in the US, and now in many countries around the world.

In 2016, 21% of all the Starbucks orders were made via mobile resulting in an increase in the revenue by 12% to roughly $5.4 billion. Starbucks has invested $300 million in digital initiatives in 2016, up from $145 million last year.

There are over 2 million apps available in various app stores and every single one of them is competing to make it among one of the top 50 apps on your mobile. While some like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp have cemented their respective positions, how did MyStarbucks break in especially being a closed loop payment app?

What happens behind the scenes?

Starbucks hired a small Portland-based tech team called the Small Society and they developed an app that was pretty darn great. Small Society just did not replicate the website of Starbucks. They designed an app that had great design, functionality and best of all, they understood the customers of Starbucks. In early 2009, most of the iPhone users were early adopters. Small society provided them a smart and sophisticated app that saved them time and effort. It seamlessly weaved loyalty programs and incentives. Getting free products for accumulating reward points proved to be very successful. In short, Small Society developed a great app for Starbucks.

Small Society

Small society is not a one-hit wonder and they are a proof that a talented tech team can do wonders for your company. Time and time again they have proved their expertise in the IOS app arena. In 2008, Raven Zachary and his team developed an IOS app for the Democratic Party—’Obama for America’. The app was a first-of-its-kind in the political arena and helped the party at the grass-roots level and eventually Small Society was formed. Since then they have worked with Amazon, Zipcar, Whole Foods, and many other brands. Four years later in 2012, Walmart acquired Small Society and 3 years later Zachary went on to work with Microsoft Hololens.

The number of companies that are seeking Small Society’s developer expertise is a testament to the importance of having that talented tech team, which can change your future!

Attracting and hiring the right tech talent

While we are aware of the latest developments in technology and initiatives by pioneering companies, the tech talent war that happens behind the scenes often goes unnoticed.

We do not realize the importance of attracting tech talent until we struggle to fill a crucial open position or accomplish a challenging task with a mediocre team.

It’s not just Starbucks. You’ve heard about the connected car wave that hit the automobile industry. The world's leading automobile makers are competing with each other. These companies made efforts to equip themselves well before this wave hit. They anticipated the change.

Toyota hired everyone from an MIT-based startup Jaybridge Robotics. The 16-member MIT team that included software engineers, AI, and robotics experts is now a part of the Toyota Research Institute and powers the connected cars revolution.

Similarly, Renault and Nissan are hiring 1000+ developers to compete in the connected car revolution.

Medical marijuana

Eaze, a medical marijuana delivery startup in San Francisco, recently received $13 million in funding. Technically, Eaze is a logistics company that delivers marijuana. However, when you go all digital, even the tiniest digital feature determines the success of the company. A recent review of Eaze by TechCrunch pointed out that not having the online and mobile payment option as the major drawback for the company.

It is not a surprise, the startup is actively looking to hire more developers. Here is a snapshot of their Careers section.

Process innovation

In today’s digital age, a talented tech team is vital for process innovation. When you are in a business where you neither have a proprietary product nor groundbreaking technology, the only way to stay ahead of your competition is by innovating the process and offering your customers the "wow" experience.

The word coffee entered the English language in the 15th century. Benz patented the first automobile in 1886 and the earliest written record for the use of Marijuana dates back to 2737 B.C in China.

If you notice, neither of these three companies invented the product they sell nor are they the only ones to sell these products. Although Starbucks comes up with new beverage-related products, like their to-die-for Caramel Waffle Cone frappuccino, it is not exactly a leap from the ice factory to the refrigerator in terms of product innovation.

There is nothing preventing from others doing what they do. Their products are still the same. The only difference is in how it is being offered and how the company connects with its customers.

To connect digitally, you need the right tech talent who can enable you to do just that and innovate the processes that you have been following for years.

Key resources and partners

In a business model, the key resources and partners are the enablers. They enable you to offer the value proposition to your customers. In this case, the digital and tech talent are your key resources.

Behind every great technology is an insanely strong technical team—a technical team composed of engineers, programmers, designers. This is the team that is always out of the limelight, anxiously waiting backstage while the product is being launched, hoping that everything goes as planned.

The question is do you have such a team yet?

See why more than 4,000 companies choose HackerEarth to hire developers

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Toward the end of the 19th century, Russia-born Polish economist, Ladislaus Bortkiewicz came up with a strategy to predict the incidence of deaths among Prussian soldiers from horse kicks.

And he did this how? He applied the Poisson distribution. It ended becoming a famous example by the way.

Fast forward a bit...

Poisson distribution can be used in many scenarios—importantly and interestingly in betting.

Sports betting is a global phenomenon, and it is estimated that this industry is worth between $700bn and $1tn globally.

And football betting is most popular among all sports.

But how does football betting odds work? how are football betting odds calculated?

It's difficult to believe that a simple mathematical equation - Poisson distribution is used to calculate the odds for a football match.

Betting on a team winning or losing is done based on the calculation explaining the sports betting across a globe.

What is 'Football betting odds' and how they define bets?

[caption id="attachment_5252" align="aligncenter" width="911"] Image Source: Bet365[/caption]

If you've ever tried placing a few pounds on your favorite team, you would have noticed these confusing numbers in front of you.

These numbers are called 'odds' and they define the probabilities of each possible outcome in an event.

The higher the value of these numbers, the less probable that particular event is.

Take the Real Madrid vs Roma match above as an example.

Since the probability of Madrid winning is higher, the odds against them winning is just 1.40. A draw, which is more unlikely, has odds of 4.75.

And the odds of a highly unlikely Roma win in 7.00.



How do these numbers impact your bet amount and their returns?

Simple. In the above example, if you bet 1 pound on a Real Madrid win and win the bet, you get back a total of 1.40 pounds (inclusive of the 1 pound that you originally bet).

Which is why winning bets on more unlikely events (like a Roma victory) gets you bigger returns.

In this case, you would have got back 7 pounds for every pound you bet on Roma if they ended up winning.

Let us now see how do bookmakers calculate football betting odds using a simple Poisson Distribution equation.

What is Poisson distribution?

“Poisson distribution is the probability of the number of events that occur in a given interval when the expected number of events is known and the events occur independently of one another.”

For instance, suppose you sit in a park for a few days and count the number of people who come to the park in a black T-shirt.

Using Poisson distribution, you can guess if the number of people coming to the park on a specific day in a black t-shirt will be 10, 11, etc.

But how does it relate to football betting odds prediction?

If you are able to calculate the average attack and defense strength of the teams in a match over a certain period and calculate the Poisson distribution, you will be able to predict the odds of one team performing over other.

But if the data is too long the data would be irrelevant, and if it's short, outliers might skew the data.

This means that not only external factors like transfers, home, and away from ground affect the odds, but also the duration of events which need to be taken into consideration for calculation.

Let’s see how football betting odds work using Poisson distribution

Before we apply Poisson, we need to get some mathematical figures.

Let’s use this method to calculate the odds for the Manchester United vs. Manchester City matches to be played on February 26, 2017.

First, we need to find the attack and defense strength of these teams.

Calculating Average Attack and Defense for prediction

Before we identify a particular team strength and weakness, we need to find the average strength and weakness of all teams in the last playing season.

This can be calculated by dividing the total goals scored in particular season by a total number of games played in a particular season.

• Number of Goals Scored at Home / Number of Games = 203/380 = 0.534
• Number of Goals Scored Away / Number of Games = 158/380 = 0.415

The difference from the values above gives the “Attack intensity” of a team.

We will also need an average of goals conceded to know the weakness, which is simply the inverse of goals scored.

The average number of goals conceded at Home = 0.415

The average number of goals conceded away = 0.534

This gives us the “ Defense intensity” of a team.

Now that we have the average strength and weakness of the teams, let's take a look at the stats for Manchester United and Manchester City in 2015.

Based on these stats, we can calculate the Poisson distribution for the teams playing in February 2017, where Manchester United is the away team and Manchester City is the home team.

[caption id="attachment_5249" align="aligncenter" width="3509"] 2015 Statistics - Manchester United vs Manchester City[/caption]

Predicting Manchester United Goals

Let’s see the possibility of Manchester United scoring at Manchester City’s home ground.

Number of Goals scored away = 22/19 = 1.15

Manchester United Goals = Number of goals scored/Season’s average goals scored away = 1.36/0.415 = 2.77

Manchester City Defense at home

This is calculated by dividing the number of goals conceded at home in the last season by the home team by the number of away games, which is 1.105 ( (21/19).

Manchester City Goals = Number of goals conceded/ Season’s average goals conceded = 1.105/0.415 = 2.66

Manchester United’s Goals = Manchester United’s Attack? Manchester City Defense? Average Number of Goals = 3.05

Predicting Manchester City Goals

Manchester City Attack at Home

Manchester City = Number of Goals scored home - 47/19 = 2.47

Manchester City Goals = Number of goals scored/Average goals scored in the last season =2.47/0.534 = 4.62

Manchester United Defense away

Take the number of goals conceded away last season by the away team and divide by the number of away games, which is equal to 1.05 ((20/19).

Manchester United Goals = Number of goals conceded/Average goals conceded in the last season =1.05/0.534 =1.966

Manchester City’s Goals = Manchester City’s Attack? Manchester United’s Defense? Average No. Goals = 1.10

Once we have the averages of Manchester United’s goals and Manchester City’s goals, we can use them to calculate the Poisson distribution for a number of goals scored by a particular team . (various goals possibilities).

Poisson Distribution betting – Predicting multiple match outcomes

The formula for Poisson distribution is:

P(x; ?) = (e-?) (?x) / x!

e = Euler’s constant = 2.718

! = Factorial

x = number of successes of the event

µ = mean distribution of the event

It can be coded as follows

#include <stdio.h>

#include <math.h>

double factorial(int n) {

  int fact = 1;

  for (int i = 1; i<=n; i++) fact *= i;

  return fact;

}

float poisson(int r, float mean) {

  return (exp((-1) * mean) * pow(mean,r))/factorial(r);

}

int main(int argc, char const *argv[])

{

  printf("%f\n", poisson(1, 1.10));

  return 0;

}

You can also use the Poisson Distribution Calculator for such equations.

Poisson Distribution prediction for match the between Manchester United and Manchester City

Goals	0	1	2	3	4	5
Manchester United	4.73%	14.44%	22.02%	22.39%	17.07%	10.41%
Manchester City	33.28%	36.61%	20.13%	7.38%	2.03%	0.44%
Probability	1.5	5.28	4.43	1.65	0.34	0.23

The possibility that Manchester United and Manchester City would score 1 goal each is 14.44% and 36.61% respectively.

From the above distribution table we can see that the possibility of Manchester city scoring no goal is 4.73 and that of Manchester United is 33.28.

Scoring 2 goals, each for Manchester United and Manchester City is 22.02% and 20.13% respectively.

The possibilities decrease as the number of goals increases to 4 and 5 goals by the individual team.

Taking these number into consideration, the odds of Manchester City winning is high if the number of goals in a match is 0 or 1. But if Manchester United is able to score 2 goals it’s the probability of winning the match increases.

So how is football betting odds made?

Based on the number by distribution table and the probability of these goals in a match, it is clear that a 1-1 draw has the highest possibility of 5.28, followed by 4.43 for a 2-2 draw. But the possibility of Manchester City winning with 1-0 or 2-1 also looks great.

Based on the previous match at Old Trafford, which is the home ground to Manchester United, Manchester City won by 2-1.

Not taking any sides (I support Algorithm), I would put my bet on 1-0 or 1-1 draw in favor of Manchester City.

The disadvantage of using the Poisson equation is that it doesn’t take into consideration external factors like the players/coach changed in transfer windows, the home ground factor, and injured players.

It helps you calculate the distribution only based on the averages of previous occurrences.

But then Elihu Feustel is one such person who makes a million dollars by betting using mathematical algorithms.

I have attended several IoT conferences, informal meetups, webinars, and podcasts. The most common questions during networking or Q&A sessions revolve around security and interoperability of IoT devices.

These concerns are valid, especially in light of recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks affecting Internet-connected devices.

To build consumer trust, companies in the IoT space—both hardware and software—are heavily investing in R&D to tackle these concerns sustainably.

In one such initiative, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, launched Ubuntu Core 16. Also known as Snappy, this is a minimal operating system designed for IoT devices. At its core are secure, remotely upgradeable Linux packages called 'snaps'.

Device Security

Ubuntu Core 16 secures IoT devices by delivering the entire operating system—including kernel, libraries, and applications—as snaps. The OS automatically updates to defend against new threats.

Snaps ensure security and reliability through the following features:

• Read-only
• Tamper-proof
• Digitally signed
• Stored as images

This architecture makes it very difficult to breach devices remotely without physical access.

Being transactional in nature, Ubuntu Core 16 automatically rolls back any failed updates, giving developers the freedom to innovate without compromising system stability.

The system retains multiple updates and selects the healthiest for installation. If an update fails, rollback ensures continuity.

Each Snap includes a meta/snap.yaml file, where developers can define:

• Security requirements
• Integration details with the system
• Update schedules

This automates the update process, removing the need for human intervention.

Device Interoperability

Ubuntu Core 16 enables snaps to communicate and work together via:

• Interfaces: Bridges between snaps
• Plugs: Consumer snaps requesting services
• Slots: Producer snaps offering services

Snaps Interfaces Example

Plug (Consumer Snap)

name: consumer_snap_name
plugs:
  db:
    interface: mysql

Slot (Producer Snap)

name: producer_snap_name
slots:
  db:
    interface: mysql

This setup enables both snaps to share a database. Additionally, snaps can share files with:

• Other snaps from the same vendor
• Community-maintained shared snaps using content-sharing interfaces

Additional Features of Ubuntu Core 16

Compatible with desktops, servers, and devices like Intel Joule, Qualcomm Dragonboard, Samsung Artik, Raspberry Pi2 and Pi3.

• Keeps files compressed and signed using SquashFS blobs, avoiding file scattering across disks.
• Compact OS with an image size of only 350 MB.
• System and application updates use xdelta diffs—only changed code is updated.
• Separation of kernel/device drivers and OS/snaps allows parallel development by different teams.

The term "Ubuntu" originates from Southern Africa and stands for “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.” While technology can simplify and connect, it must be rooted in ethical principles.

No advanced system can safeguard humanity unless guided by sensible and humane ideologies. Building smart systems begins with building a thoughtful ecosystem of responsible people.