The best way to bring much-needed attention to your new product or service is by doing a product launch.

Even with an awesome product, a great deal of its success depends on the launch, as the hype surrounding it can bring you more sales, more happy customers, and a better reputation for your company.

Still, having a good product launch is a daunting task, which takes a lot of research and planning in order to be successful and if you don’t go through all the key steps to do it right, you are risking the future of your product.

Here are a few things you shouldn’t skip doing when launching your new product.

Research the market

For a new product to be successful in the market, you should do your research well. There are three key points that need to be considered even before developing the product.

• Audience. No product will succeed if no one wants to use it, so think about your potential customers and their needs. Is there a pain point your product will solve?
• Competition. Are there any other businesses offering the same or similar product? How are you going to differentiate yourself from them? What makes your product unique and special?
• Finances. How much will you need to invest upfront and what are the risks attached to the new product launch?

Once you’ve found the answers to these questions, you will be able to create both a unique selling proposition and a value proposition.

This means you will be able to provide your customers with answers on why your product is better than the one your competitors are offering and what they’ll get in return for their money.

Plan ahead

For a product launch to succeed, one must plan ahead.

There are numerous aspects which need to be included in the plan, from product development and testing to marketing and pricing.

Not all the details have to be known at the early stages of the planning, but the timeline and the framework of the activities should be mapped out and defined.

As gaining attention is your main goal, you will need to gear up early and focus on building relationships with influencers, as well as brainstorm all the creative elements which are going to get you publicity. Making a schedule will make it easier for your teams to check their progress and prioritize tasks, and if followed, a plan will decrease the odds of working under stress and launching late.

Find the right influencers

With all the impact social media channels have nowadays, you should focus on finding influencers who can easily approach your target market.

Stats say that 49% of consumers rely on the influencer recommendation on social media, so be sure to provide influencers with the exclusive news and samples of your products.

Encourage, entice, and incentivize them to put their reviews of your products on their blogs, video, and social media channels. This can bring the right kind of attention to your launch and attract the right customers.

See Also: 5 Reasons Why You Should Consider Instagram Advertising

Promote the launch

Before the product hits the market, you need to educate your potential customers on its features and advantages and build hype around its arrival. Here are some ideas on how to best achieve this:

• Update your social media followers regularly on your progress.
• Write a blog and educate your customers on products features.
• Use videos, demos and whitepapers to give detailed info on your product.
• Submit guest posts to sites relevant in your industry.
• Have social media contests offering your customers a chance to be the first to get a sample of your product.
• Provide the industry experts and influencers with samples of your product and freebies.
• Make a countdown timer on your website and publish teaser videos and photos.

If possible, it is the best to tie your launch day to a larger event, such as an industry event or trade show, to get the most publicity for launching.

Get feedback

The best way to know whether your product is going to be a success once it reaches the market is by soft-launching it to a portion of your target audience. By testing your product in your product market, you will gather valuable information. You can then use this to make the necessary adjustments to your product or campaign.

There are many different ways to get customer feedback that can help you solve the customers’ complaints and issues from the moment your new product reaches the market. Statistics show that a dissatisfied customer shares their experience with 16 people on average, while only 1 out of 26 will actually complain to the company. By using different social media listening and other available tools, you can now respond to both the positive and negative feedback in a timely manner and do wonders for your brand’s reputation.

Keep the fire alive

The launch is hardly over when the launch day is done.

To get the most out of it, plan ahead on how to best exploit it afterward.

You can achieve this by posting the news about your latest product and the benefits it brings into your customers’ lives. Also, think about the ways to involve your customers into this post-launch campaign and motivate them to post videos and photos of themselves using and enjoying your product.

As a successful launch is essential to the positioning of your product in the market and your brand’s reputation, make sure to plan it carefully and not leave anything out. Use as many promotional tactics you can handle, because when it comes to a product launch, you can not over-market it.

The post 6 Things to Do Before a Product Launch appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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6 Things to Do Before a Product Launch

Trailer FrenzyA special place to find the newest trailers for movies and TV shows you’re craving.  

The first trailer for Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan is here, and it’s gorgeous.

In a sweeping ninety seconds, the trailer showcases big, beautiful settings and an attention to detail that makes the remake look more like a period film than a Disney adaptation. Mulan, played by Yifeu Lu, goes from quiet daughter to epic warrior. The trailer teases really sweeping fights, too, real Wuxia-type stuff, and you can absolutely see that stylistic influence on the shooting here.

So far as music goes, there’s no singing, but hints of the animated film’s music are heard in the soundtrack. Which, if that’s the approach the movie takes, is fairly understated for what looks to be a pretty self-serious film.

Check out the first trailer, and get ready: Mulan comes to theaters March 27, 2020.

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The First Mulan Trailer Teases a Sweeping Warrior’s Adventure

$ composer require protoqol/prequel $ php artisan vendor:publish --tag=config $ php artisan vendor:publish --tag=public

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Laravel Prequel (Beta)

New Features for Querying Polymorphic Relations in Laravel 5.8.27

The Laravel team released v5.8.27 with a whereHasMorph() method to work with polymorphic Eloquent relationships (MorphTo).

The new whereHasMorph() and corresponding methods make it possible to query polymorphic relationships with something like the following:

Comment::whereHasMorph('commentable', [Post::class, Video::class], function ($query) { $query->where('title', 'foo'); })->get(); 

Which produces something like the following query:

select * from "comments" where ( ( "commentable_type" = 'App\Post' and exists ( select * from "posts" where "comments"."commentable_id" = "posts"."id" and "title" = 'foo' ) ) or ( "commentable_type" = 'App\Video' and exists ( select * from "videos" where "comments"."commentable_id" = "videos"."id" and "title" = 'foo' ) ) ) 

All the examples shown here are from the pull request (#28928) description, which explains it in further detail, so check out the full notes:

By creating a temporary BelongsTo relationship for each type and allowing relationship instances as the first argument of has(), we can reuse most of the existing code.

The type is passed as the second argument to the closure, which simplifies queries with different constraints:

Comment::whereHasMorph('commentable', [Post::class, Video::class], function ($query, $type) { if ($type === Post::class) { // $query-> } if ($type === Video::class) { // $query-> } }); 

Last, providing a wildcard as the second argument will let Laravel get the possible types from the database:

Comment::whereHasMorph('commentable', '*', function ($query) { $query->where('title', 'foo'); })->get(); 

Next, the mix asset URL is configurable via the MIX_ASSET_URL environment variable.

Next, you can set the RedisManager default driver with the setDriver() method.

You can see the full list of fixes below, and the whole diff between 5.8.26 and 5.8.27 on GitHub. The full release notes for Laravel 5.8 are available in the GitHub 5.8 changelog:

v5.8.27

Added

• Let mix helper use app.mix_url config (#28952)
• Added RedisManager::setDriver() method (#28985)
• Added whereHasMorph() and corresponding methods to work with MorphTo relations (#28928)

Fixed

Changed

• Prevented TestResponse::dump() and TestResponse::dumpHeaders() methods from ending execution of the script (#28960)
• Allowed TestResponse::dump() and TestResponse::dumpHeaders() methods chaining (#28967)
• Allowed to NotificationFake accept custom channels (#28969)
• Replace contents of service manifest atomically (#28973)
• Pass down the serverVersion database connection option to Doctrine DBAL connection (#28964, 1b55b28)
• Replace self:: with static:: in the Relation::getMorphedModel() (#28974)
• Set a message for SuspiciousOperationException (#29000)
• Storing Mailgun Message-ID in the headers after sending (#28994)

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New Features for Querying Polymorphic Relations in Laravel 5.8.27

There are over one million Dockerfiles on GitHub today, but not all Dockerfiles are created equally. Efficiency is critical, and this blog series will cover five areas for Dockerfile best practices to help you write better Dockerfiles: incremental build time, image size, maintainability, security and repeatability. If you’re just beginning with Docker, this first blog post is for you! The next posts in the series will be more advanced.

Important note: the tips below follow the journey of ever-improving Dockerfiles for an example Java project based on Maven. The last Dockerfile is thus the recommended Dockerfile, while all intermediate ones are there only to illustrate specific best practices.

Incremental build time

In a development cycle, when building a Docker image, making code changes, then rebuilding, it is important to leverage caching. Caching helps to avoid running build steps again when they don’t need to.

Tip #1: Order matters for caching

However, the order of the build steps (Dockerfile instructions) matters, because when a step’s cache is invalidated by changing files or modifying lines in the Dockerfile, subsequent steps of their cache will break. Order your steps from least to most frequently changing steps to optimize caching.

Tip #2: More specific COPY to limit cache busts

Only copy what’s needed. If possible, avoid “COPY  .” When copying files into your image, make sure you are very specific about what you want to copy. Any changes to the files being copied will break the cache. In the example above, only the pre-built jar application is needed inside the image, so only copy that. That way unrelated file changes will not affect the cache.

Tip #3: Identify cacheable units such as apt-get update & install

Each RUN instruction can be seen as a cacheable unit of execution. Too many of them can be unnecessary, while chaining all commands into one RUN instruction can bust the cache easily, hurting the development cycle. When installing packages from package managers, you always want to update the index and install packages in the same RUN: they form together one cacheable unit. Otherwise you risk installing outdated packages.

Reduce Image size

Image size can be important because smaller images equal faster deployments and a smaller attack surface.

Tip #4: Remove unnecessary dependencies

Remove unnecessary dependencies and do not install debugging tools. If needed debugging tools can always be installed later. Certain package managers such as apt, automatically install packages that are recommended by the user-specified package, unnecessarily increasing the footprint. Apt has the –no-install-recommends flag which ensures that dependencies that were not actually needed are not installed. If they are needed, add them explicitly.

Tip #5: Remove package manager cache

Package managers maintain their own cache which may end up in the image. One way to deal with it is to remove the cache in the same RUN instruction that installed packages. Removing it in another RUN instruction would not reduce the image size.

There are further ways to reduce image size such as multi-stage builds which will be covered at the end of this blog post. The next set of best practices will look at how we can optimize for maintainability, security, and repeatability of the Dockerfile.

Maintainability

Tip #6: Use official images when possible

Official images can save a lot of time spent on maintenance because all the installation stamps are done and best practices are applied. If you have multiple projects, they can share those layers because they use exactly the same base image.

Tip #7: Use more specific tags

Do not use the latest tag. It has the convenience of always being available for official images on Docker Hub but there can be breaking changes over time. Depending on how far apart in time you rebuild the Dockerfile without cache, you may have failing builds.

Instead, use more specific tags for your base images. In this case, we’re using openjdk. There are a lot more tags available so check out the Docker Hub documentation for that image which lists all the existing variants.

Tip #8: Look for minimal flavors

Some of those tags have minimal flavors which means they are even smaller images. The slim variant is based on a stripped down Debian, while the alpine variant is based on the even smaller Alpine Linux distribution image. A notable difference is that debian still uses GNU libc while alpine uses musl libc which, although much smaller, may in some cases cause compatibility issues. In the case of openjdk, the jre flavor only contains the java runtime, not the sdk; this also drastically reduces the image size.

Reproducibility

So far the Dockerfiles above have assumed that your jar artifact was built on the host. This is not ideal because you lose the benefits of the consistent environment provided by containers. For instance if your Java application depends on specific libraries it may introduce unwelcome inconsistencies depending on which computer the application is built.

Tip #9: Build from source in a consistent environment

The source code is the source of truth from which you want to build a Docker image. The Dockerfile is simply the blueprint.

You should start by identifying all that’s needed to build your application. Our simple Java application requires Maven and the JDK, so let’s base our Dockerfile off of a specific minimal official maven image from Docker Hub, that includes the JDK. If you needed to install more dependencies, you could do so in a RUN step.

The pom.xml and src folders are copied in as they are needed for the final RUN step that produces the app.jar application with mvn package. (The -e flag is to show errors and -B to run in non-interactive aka “batch” mode).

We solved the inconsistent environment problem, but introduced another one: every time the code is changed, all the dependencies described in pom.xml are fetched. Hence the next tip.

Tip #10: Fetch dependencies in a separate step

By again thinking in terms of cacheable units of execution, we can decide that fetching dependencies is a separate cacheable unit that only needs to depend on changes to pom.xml and not the source code. The RUN step between the two COPY steps tells Maven to only fetch the dependencies.

There is one more problem that got introduced by building in consistent environments: our image is way bigger than before because it includes all the build-time dependencies that are not needed at runtime.

Tip #11: Use multi-stage builds to remove build dependencies (recommended Dockerfile)

Multi-stage builds are recognizable by the multiple FROM statements. Each FROM starts a new stage. They can be named with the AS keyword which we use to name our first stage “builder” to be referenced later. It will include all our build dependencies in a consistent environment.

The second stage is our final stage which will result in the final image. It will include the strict necessary for the runtime, in this case a minimal JRE (Java Runtime) based on Alpine. The intermediary builder stage will be cached but not present in the final image. In order to get build artifacts into our final image, use COPY --from=STAGE_NAME. In this case, STAGE_NAME is builder.

Multi-stage builds is the go-to solution to remove build-time dependencies.

We went from building bloated images inconsistently to building minimal images in a consistent environment while being cache-friendly. In the next blog post, we will dive more into other uses of multi-stage builds.

New blog from #Docker: Intro guide to Dockerfile best practices
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Additional Resources:  

• DockerCon Talk Recording: Dockerfile Best Practices
• DockerCon Talk Slides: Dockerfile Best Practices
• Docker Docs: Dockerfile References

The post Intro Guide to Dockerfile Best Practices appeared first on Docker Blog.

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Intro Guide to Dockerfile Best Practices

composer require stancl/tenancy

protected $middlewarePriority = [ \Stancl\Tenancy\Middleware\InitializeTenancy::class, // ... ];

php artisan vendor:publish --provider='Stancl\Tenancy\TenancyServiceProvider' --tag=config

// .env DB_CONNECTION=sqlite // config/tenancy.php 'database' => [ 'based_on' => 'sqlite', // ... ],

'tenancy' => [ 'host' => env('TENANCY_REDIS_HOST', '127.0.0.1'), 'password' => env('TENANCY_REDIS_PASSWORD', null), 'port' => env('TENANCY_REDIS_PORT', 6379), 'database' => env('TENANCY_REDIS_DB', 3), ],

>>> tenant()->create('tenant1.localhost') => [ "uuid" => "e5611150-9a9e-11e9-8315-b9eb127de2b8", "domain" => "tenant1.localhost", ] >>> tenant()->create('tenant2.localhost') => [ "uuid" => "e8002ec0-9a9e-11e9-8095-51e64ce28359", "domain" => "tenant2.localhost", ]

touch database/migrations/tenant mv database/migrations/*.php database/migrations/tenant

php artisan tenants:migrate Tenant: e8002ec0-9a9e-11e9-8095-51e64ce28359 (tenant2.localhost) Migrating: 2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table Migrated: 2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table Migrating: 2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table Migrated: 2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131126_create_posts_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131126_create_posts_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131334_create_categories_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131334_create_categories_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131558_create_tags_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131558_create_tags_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131702_create_post_tag_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131702_create_post_tag_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131909_create_comments_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131909_create_comments_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_133429_add_columns_to_user Migrated: 2017_03_04_133429_add_columns_to_user Tenant: e5611150-9a9e-11e9-8315-b9eb127de2b8 (tenant1.localhost) Migrating: 2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table Migrated: 2014_10_12_000000_create_users_table Migrating: 2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table Migrated: 2014_10_12_100000_create_password_resets_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131126_create_posts_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131126_create_posts_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131334_create_categories_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131334_create_categories_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131558_create_tags_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131558_create_tags_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131702_create_post_tag_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131702_create_post_tag_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_131909_create_comments_table Migrated: 2017_03_04_131909_create_comments_table Migrating: 2017_03_04_133429_add_columns_to_user Migrated: 2017_03_04_133429_add_columns_to_user

php artisan tenants:seed --class DummyDataSeeder Tenant: e8002ec0-9a9e-11e9-8095-51e64ce28359 (tenant2.localhost) Database seeding completed successfully. Tenant: e5611150-9a9e-11e9-8315-b9eb127de2b8 (tenant1.localhost) Database seeding completed successfully.

php artisan serve

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How to make any Laravel application multi-tenant in 5 minutes

Trailer FrenzyA special place to find the newest trailers for movies and TV shows you’re craving.  

If you thought Dwayne Johnson channeling a teenage boy in the video game version of “Jumaaanjee,” you ain’t seen nothing yet. Check out the first trailer for Jumanji: The Next Level.

Jumanji: The Next Level is the sequel to the surprise hit Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and the story picks up some time after the events of the previous movie, when four teenagers ended up in the bodies of video game avatars (played by Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black), forced to play the game to get out alive.

Spencer (Alex Wolff) has seemingly gone missing inside the now-malfunctioning video game, and it’s up to his three friends to go in after him. Once our heroes step inside, they quickly realize something’s wrong. Bethany’s nowhere to be found, characters are switching places…and two old guys have shown up! That’s right, Danny DeVito and Danny Glover are playing the game too. DeVito’s character is in Johnson’s avatar, and Hart is channeling Glover.

I will say: Watching Johnson and Hart play two old guys is more of a delight than I anticipated. Johnson’s got that Nor’Easter accent down. However, it’ll be sad not seeing Black perfectly channeling Bethany, as Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) is now in his body.

Jumanji: The Next Level sees the return of Nick Jonas, Madison Iseman, and Morgan Turner, along with a new character played by Awkwafina. The movie debuts on December 13.

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Danny DeVito and Danny Glover Dive Into the Hilarious First Trailer for Jumanji: The Next Level

Polk County, FL — County Sheriff Grady Judd is a peace officer who knows and appreciates the value of armed citizens. In this short video, he encourages people to get guns and become good at using them.

If you’re not afraid of a gun, get one. Become proficient. Get a concealed firearms license and carry it.

And if you need to shoot somebody, shoot ’em a lot.

He also notes that “the armed assailant doesn’t plan on you fighting back. He plans on having a gun, doing all the shooting, and you’re just the sitting duck.”

Well the ducks need to shoot back.

Good advice. It worked for the guy who was attacked at a gas pump last month. He put one bad guy in the hospital and walked away. Don’t you just love a happy ending?

Enjoy the video; it won’t take much of your time.

The post Florida Sheriff: ‘If You Need to Shoot Somebody, Shoot ’em a Lot’ appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.

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Florida Sheriff: ‘If You Need to Shoot Somebody, Shoot ’em a Lot’

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Jet Engine Barbecue Grill

Opinion

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- When most Americans think of espionage, we think of debonair foreign spies sneaking around military compounds – or bespectacled hackers hammering away at keyboards to steal top secret information from foreign adversaries.

But there is an entire world of espionage happening right under our noses – at American colleges and universities.

Foreign intelligence services routinely probe computer systems at US higher education institutions – and they also enlist (or implant) students and professors as assets to pass important research and findings to their spy agencies.

The main goal isn’t typically to learn any classified state secrets (not in academic espionage anyway). Foreign actors want to steal the important technological advancements, research, and innovations being created by our nation’s best and brightest researchers and scientists.

Back in 2013, the Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property said that this academic espionage made up a significant part of the estimated $300 billion of intellectual property theft America endured that year. According to the commission, “American scientific innovations and new technologies are tracked and stolen from American universities, national laboratories, private think tanks, and start-up companies, as well as from the major R&D centers of multinational companies.”

This is a serious problem for the United States. If this level of academic espionage continues, our ability to lead the world in innovation and new technology could be severely hampered – and the future could be defined by the countries who are stealing our ideas.

One of the biggest offenders is China. I detail the many ways in which the Chinese Communist Party is spying on Americans (and the Chinese people) in my new book Trump vs. China: America’s Greatest Challenge, which comes out in October. Former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on June 9, 2016 that “hundreds of thousands of students and academicians” aid China’s spy operations. Many of these students, professors, and researchers (either willingly or through intense pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party) help to “potentially extend the reach of Chinese intelligence into the core structures of our nation’s security,” Van Cleave told the commission.

Of particular concern are China’s Confucius Institutes that have been established on campuses in the US and across the world. At first blush, these institutes appear to be legitimate academic foreign exchange programs promoting Chinese language and cultural studies. However, they are also used to spread Chinese Communist Party propaganda and soft power by promoting the party’s vision of China. Concerns have been raised that they could be used for espionage efforts. On February 13, 2018, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee that China is beginning to pull back on this effort, but the institutes are still “something that we’re watching warily and in certain instances have developed … appropriate investigative steps.”

Luckily, there is an ongoing effort in Congress to curb this activity and protect American colleges and universities from being helpless targets of foreign espionage.

The Stop Higher Education Espionage and Theft Act of 2019 (or SHEET Act) was introduced in the Senate by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. It is being carried in the US House of Representatives by Florida Representative Francis Rooney.

This bill will create a new way for federal law enforcement to designate an entity suspected of spying in our colleges and universities as a “foreign intelligence threat to higher education.” (The designation will be promptly appealable when warranted.) Colleges and universities that accept gifts from or enter into contracts with designated threats will have more stringent reporting requirements under the Higher Education Act. If evidence of espionage is found, US authorities will be able to quickly remove identified threats.

This is a critically important problem that we must solve. When foreign countries steal our research and ideas, American researchers, innovators, and thinkers lose the ability to lead our country into the future. Ultimately, this costs American jobs – and our security.

Congress should pass the SHEET Act as soon as possible.

Your Friend,
Newt

Newt’s World Ep 21: Communist China vs. Hong Kong

One of the most important struggles on the planet is taking place right now between the people of Hong Kong and Communist China. In this week’s episode of my Newt’s World podcast, I discuss the implications of this major turning point in China and across the world. Listen for free here>>

P.S. My new book, Trump’s America: The Truth About Our Nation’s Great Comeback is out and available for order.

About Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich is well-known as the architect of the “Contract with America” that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. After he was elected Speaker, he disrupted the status quo by moving power out of Washington and back to the American people.

Gingrich Productions is a performance and production company featuring the work of Newt Gingrich and Callista Gingrich. Visit : www.gingrichproductions.com

The post Stealing Secrets from Students appeared first on AmmoLand.com.

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Stealing Secrets from Students