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17 Nov

Some best open source software for school management.

School Time School Management System|School Management Software|SchoolTime – that is nice when you have not big school.

TS School School Administration Software – that offers a robust student management system, reports, a powerful organizational calendar (with plenty of space to detail sports team timetables or organize classes by subject matter), and an exam module for teachers.

SchoolTool The SchoolTool Book – has a ton of features that largely appeal to teachers.

Check out some interesting information about open source here – Check out the benefits of open source library and open source software

12 Nov

Ethereum Vs Bitcoin: What’s The Main Difference?

While Bitcoin has long been dominant in the cryptocurrency scene, it is certainly not alone. Ethereum is another cryptocurrency related project that has attracted a lot of hype because of its additional features and applications.

Ethereum: More Than Just Money

The first thing about Ethereum is that it is not just a digital currency. It is a blockchain-based platform with many aspects. It features smart contracts, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and it uses its currency called ether for peer-to-peer contracts.

Ethereum’s smart contracts use blockchain stored applications for contract negotiation and facilitation. The benefit of these contracts is that the blockchain provides a decentralized way to verify and enforce them. The decentralized aspect makes it incredibly difficult for fraud or censorship. Ethereum’s smart contracts aim to provide greater security than traditional contracts and bring down the associated costs.

The smart contract applications are powered by ether, Ethereum’s blockchain based cryptocurrency. Ether, as well as other crypto-assets, are held in the Ethereum Wallet, which allows you to create and use smart contracts. The system has been described by the New York Times as..

“a single shared computer that is run by the network of users and on which resources are parceled out and paid for by ether.”

Implement Smart Contracts With Your Own Cryptocurrency

Ethereum allows you to create digital tokens that can be used to represent virtual shares, assets, proof of membership and more. These smart contracts are compatible with any wallet, as well as exchanges that use a standard coin API. You can copy thecode from Ethereum’s website and then use your tokens for many purposes, including the representation of shares, forms of voting and also fundraising. You can either have a fixed amount of tokens in circulation or have a fluctuating amount based on predetermined rules.

You Don’t Need Kickstarter When You Have Ethereum

One great feature of Ethereum is that it gives developers a means to raise funds for various applications. For your new project, you can set up a contract and seek pledges from the community. The money that is raised will be held until the goal is reached or until an agreed upon date. The funds will be released back to the contributors if the goal is not met, or go on to the project if it is successful. Kicking out Kickstarter means that the third party is taken out, along with their rules, and also the fees they charge (when you include processing fees, Kickstarter can take up to 10% of a project’s budget).

Skip the Traditional Management Structure With Democratic Autonomous Organizations

Not only can Ethereum help you source funding, but it can also help to provide the organizational structure to get your idea off the ground. You can collect proposals from the people who backed your project and then hold votes on how you should proceed. This means that you can skip the expense of a traditional structure, such as hiring managers and doing paperwork. Ethereum also protects your project from outside influences, while its decentralized network means that you won’t face downtime.

The Finer Details: Differences Between Ethereum and Bitcoin

There are also many smaller aspects that differ between the two blockchain-based projects. Bitcoin’s average block time is about 10 minutes, while Ethereum’s aims to be 12 seconds. This quick time is enabled by Ethereum’s GHOST protocol. A faster block time means that confirmations are quicker. However, there are also more orphaned blocks.

Another key difference between them is their monetary supply. More than two-thirds of all available bitcoin have already been mined, with the majority going to early miners. Ethereum raised its launch capital with a presale and only about half of its coins will have been mined by its fifth year of existence.

The reward for mining Bitcoin halves about every four years and it is currently valued at 12.5 bitcoins. Ethereum rewards miners based on its proof-of-work algorithm called Ethash, with 5 ether given for each block. Ethash is a memory hard hashing algorithm, which encourages decentralized mining by individuals, rather than the use of more centralized ASICs as with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and Ethereum also cost their transactions in different ways. In Ethereum, it is called Gas, and the costing of transactions depends on their storage needs, complexity and bandwidth usage. In Bitcoin, the transactions are limited by the block size and they compete equally with each other.

Ethereum features its own Turing complete internal code, which means that anything can be calculated with enough computing power and enough time. Bitcoin does not have this capability. While there are certainly advantages to the Turing-complete, its complexity also brings security complications, which contributed to the DAO attack in June.

Ethereum and Bitcoin: Two Very Different Beasts

While many will compare the cryptocurrency aspect of both Ethereum and Bitcoin, the reality is that they are vastly different projects and have different intentions. Bitcoin has emerged as a relatively stable digital currency, while Ethereum aims to encompass more, with ether just a component of its smart contract applications.

12 Nov

What are some things that every entrepreneur should know, but that nobody teaches, when starting their first business?

This is the dark side of things you have to know. Starting a business for the first time is not for the weak-hearted. The fact of the matter is, lot of darkness is behind every startup story, people hate to share or talk about it. Here is a list of some must-know dark topics:

Expect no one to support you and everyone to ridicule and demotivate you. If you get any support, be thankful for it. People are stuck in the job mentality.
There is no prestige in it. Heck, even when your daily income is more than the whole cabinet of minister’s salaries combined, they will still think of a minister as someone better than you. Heck, a low-level section manager has more prestige than you. Never get sucked into showing off your wealth for respect, it’s futile.
Everything that will go wrong will go wrong. Have a plan B as good as plan A.
Never share your failures with anyone. There, I told you, the crowd is dying to hear it. Share only your success because it will also reflect on your future investor’s opinion about you.
You have a 50/50 chance of failure, no matter how good your plans are. So be prepared to fail, for success, no other preparation is required.
Never take a debt it will slow you down, try again if you failed.
Never ask friends and family for investment or loan. You will probably lose it, and they will distract you from doing your thing. Don’t burn bridges.
Try to do your first business in secret until you succeed. Because people don’t trust a person who fails a lot. Neither the investors whom you may need in the future.
Do something you enjoy because everyone is motivating you and this is the only way to stay motivated.
Be kind to your employees but don’t try to be their friend, they will use you. Besides, when they screw up, you will need to fire them swiftly.
Make time for your family, friends, social life and hobbies, otherwise you will exhaust yourself. Remember that you are the cornerstone of your business and it will fall when you do.
Be really careful to your customers because bad reviews cannot be deleted from the internet.
Everyone wants a piece of your new income, from your mom to your friends, even after they ridiculed you. Do not help anyone. Remember airplane’s emergency instructions, help yourself, then help others. Don’t help anyone on account of your business. Learn to say NO.
Again everyone wants a piece of you, from your staff to your suppliers, to your customers, even the government. Protect yourself from disclaimers to contracts.
Never cheat your way into anything, sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. Your enemies and competitors will use it against you. Be as ethical and legal as a proper person should be.

You better learn now, than learn it the hard way.

12 Nov

What is the best advice for a young, first-time startup CEO?

Welcome to the world of business, may your journey embark fruitfully.

You have to keep an open mind to this as it may sound counter intuitive but it actually works. So be patient and be attentive to details and read between the lines.

Are you really mentally ready for this?

Here are my fool proof 27 points for a startup.

Do not take loans.
It’s an emotional roller coaster so be ready and enjoy it do not give up. You will lose a lot of hair but hey, bald is in fashion.
Do not take loans.
Make the 20% of product features that are responsible for 80% of your value first. With your own god damn money.
Do not take loans.
The remaining 80% of features of your products, add them later organically one by one.
Do not take loans.
Talk to people and ask their opinions on stuff you know nothing, Jon Snow.
Do not take loans.
Build a distribution network and channel partners. More sustainable than just advertisement and it is an asset to add to your company value. They are kind of your subscribers the more you have, the surer how much you will earn, and you can plan your scaling around it.
Do not take loans.
When you need investors don’t ask for money for your salary, it’s a waste of money. Ask for features and growing distribution network.
Do not take loans.
Keep innovating and don’t bother with cat fights with your copycats. It’s a waste of time.
Do not take loans.
If you are a technical guy step down from being CEO and get someone who knows how to run a business to do it for you. It also will make the investors trust you more. Don’t fight the CEO over authority, only vision.
Do not take loans.
Investors want to see a team that knows its shit. Not your buddies.
Do not take loans.
When you want investors to get professional help to evaluate your startup and to tell you how much shares to offer. Residuals 1% for my 1 billion idea is a waste of the investors. Do not waste time on investors, they talk just like your ex gossiping about how small your wee wee is.
Do not take loans.
Focus on your business process and do not change it every day, it frustrates your employees and customers and your distributor and channel partners. When you want to change split a operate line with new offering and gradually change. If it works, don’t fix it.
Do not take loans.
Make your business unique, no one wants to invest in another clone.
Do not take loans.
Don’t try to fight multi-billion dollar companies. Investors will think you are an idiot. Instead, fill the gap these companies don’t cover, and they might actually buy you. They are potentially investors too.
Did I mention do not take loans? DO NOT TAKE LOANS.

07 Nov

Fintech & Banking News 7th November, 2017

Market Intel

Australia’s fintech industry grows – Based on survey results from 166 fintech companies –it was found that the nation’s ecosystem has boomed over the past 12 months, seeing rapid growth with firms revelling in a 208% (or 3.1 times) annual median revenue jump. Read More

Paytm takes on messaging apps with chat feature – Indian mobile wallet giant Paytm has added a chat feature to its app as it seeks to defend its ground against messaging outfits, such as Whatsapp, entering the payments space. Initially only available on Android, Inbox lets users send each other audio, video, pictures and text, as well as money. Read More

Digital, connected, client-centric: a new model for corporate banking – Corporates have made massive leaps in digitally transforming their services and it is ringing change within the corporate banking ecosystem. A new research paper explores the need for a new ecosystem. Read More

Three of Australia’s largest banks partner to create payment platform Beem – Three of Australia’s largest banks, The Commonwealth Bank (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB) and Westpac have partnered to create Beem –a new mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) payments platform. Read More

Mobile apps replace bank branches for UK millennials – More than half of millennial Brits now regularly use their mobile phones to keep on top of their financial affairs, according to a Visa survey.Of more than 2000 Brits quizzed, 38% carry out banking via an app on a regular basis, with this rising to 53% for 18 to 34 year olds. Read More

20+ banks and R3 plan DLT-based cross-border payment platform – Blockchain consortium R3 and 22 of its member banks have collaborated on the development of a cross-border payments platform built using distributed ledger technology (DLT). Read More

German mobile challenger bank N26 expands to UK – German-based mobile challenger bank N26 will enter the UK market in the first half of 2018. According to N26, the UK is “one of the most advanced markets”in Europe in terms of digital payment methods. It says “non-cash payments and e-commerce are the accepted norm”. Read More

Visa rolls out real-time payments platform in Europe – Visa is to bring its real-time payments platform to market in Europe after experiencing strong growth in other key markets globally. Visa Direct enables P2P, B2C, and B2B payments with funds transfers to recipient accounts taking place within minutes. Read More

Client/Prospect Intel

Cashplus licence = new UK challenger bank – London-based financial services provider Cashplus is making the bold move into the challenger bank ring by unveiling its next move: applying for a banking licence. Cashplus says it has positioned itself to become the “now generation”bank, with its “instant”online decisions, “anytime”banking services and lending products. Read More

Orange Bank launches in France – Orange is launching its new banking offer in mainland France today. This 100% mobile-based offer is provided by Orange Bank and will be the only French bank to offer for free a service that provides real-time balances, mobile payment, innovative uses and a virtual adviser that is available 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. Read More

Al Rajhi Bank Launches Exclusive Payment Services Solution in Collaboration With Accenture – The new Hub is aimed at maintaining Al Rajhi Bank’s leadership in the payments market in Saudi Arabia, providing a unique payment solution for all the bank’s payment products & services. Read More

Westpac to work with iconic design gurus for wearable payments play – Westpac is to work with top lifestyle designers to create a range of wearable tap and go payment attachments that can be fitted to consumer accessories. With Westpac’s PayWear range, customers will be able to tap and pay in the same way they regularly do with their debit card. Read More

Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland hit by system outages – The customers of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have been affected by an online and mobile banking glitch that is preventing access to accounts or telling users they don’t have an account with the bank. Read More

Mizuho to test wallet app for smartphones – Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. and Mizuho Bank, Ltd. have begun proof-of-concept testing of pring*, a wallet app for smartphones. They jointly developed pring, and this proof-of-concept testing process will examine pring’s ability to perform a variety of transactions using electronic money drawn from the user’s bank account. Read More

YES Bank fined $1 million over massive ATM breach – The Reserve Bank of India has hit YES bank with a $1 million fine for failing to promptly report a breach of its ATM network. Hitachi Payment Systems in February admitted culpability for the YES Bank breach that spawned a massive recall of debit cards by the nation’s banks. Read More

Competition Intel

Lloyds Bank Invests In Payments Platform Technology From Finastra – Lloyds Bank announced the implementation of its payments platform, powered by Finastra. Finastra has a long history of working with Lloyds Bank, with the organization already benefitting from its corporate banking, payments and capital markets technology. Read More

Dime Community Bank signs with Fiserv – Fiserv,announced that Dime Community Bank, a $6.44 billion asset financial institution based in Brooklyn, New York, will accelerate its transformation to a robust community commercial bank model by moving to a modern, real-time core banking platform and integrated suite of digital banking solutions from Fiserv. Read More

Bar Harbor Bank converts to Jack Henry SilverLake – Jack Henry Banking division announced that Bar Harbor Bank & Trust has implemented the SilverLake System for its robust processing power and mastered flexibility. Bar Harbor was running a competitive platform in-house and was simultaneously facing an imminent investment to its IT infrastructure. Read More

Nine NZ credit unions shift to Oracle Flexcube for core bankiing – Aotearoa Credit Union was the first of the nine to go live on Flexcube in August, after 18 months of planning and implementation. NZCU Baywide is the second of nine New Zealand credit unions to shift to Oracle’s core banking offering, Flexcube. Read More

Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) Plc plans deployment of TCS BaNCS – The CSCS Plc plans to increase automation and efficiency of the Nigerian capital market with the deployment of TCS BaNCS, a multi-asset class solution for securities depository, clearing and settlement. The new solution replaced the NASDAQ Equator. Read More

Regions Bank completes wealthtech modernisation project with SEI (underpinned by the TCS ) – US-based Regions Bank has gone live with the SEI Wealth Platform, following an 18-month transition of its private wealth, asset management and institutional services businesses to the new platform. SEI Wealth Platform is underpinned by the TCS Bancs solution. Read More

07 Nov

DBS launches world’s largest API developer platform

DBS Bank launch a banking API developer platform that it believes is the largest by a bank anywhere in the world.

The API platform makes a wide array of APIs available for other brands, corporates, fintechs, and software developers to plug into and has the potential to significantly accelerate the bank’s digital ambition and customer impact.

With 155 APIs at launch for Singapore across more than 20 categories such as funds transfers, rewards, PayLah! and real-time payments, the platform will offer the world’s largest number of and most relevant banking APIs for companies, whatever their focus, from fintech to lifestyle.

More than 50 companies including household names such as AIG, McDonald’s, MSIG, PropertyGuru, as well as start-ups like Activpass, FoodPanda, Homage, and soCash have already hopped onto the platform to develop solutions that will bring more convenience and value to their customers.

05 Nov

Why ERP implementation is a challenging task?

Short answer

When implementing an ERP solution there is much more involved than just technology.

———————————————————————————————————————

Long answer

Technology is the easy part. Changing the organization and their (hidden) habits is a lot more cumbersome. The business transformation part is typically seriously underestimated.

If I would have to estimate the effort distribution on a typical project, I would indicate

30% technology
70% business transformation

As a matter of fact, humans don’t like to change. This is how our brains have been designed during our evolution. More than 80% of our time, we are just executing routines. Over many years, our brains have been trained to ‘stick to routines’. Reconsidering every action is just consuming way to much energy and slowing us down. In threatening situations we have to be able to react in less than a second. Out in the wild, solid routines save our live.

When implementing an ERP you replace all fundaments on which organizations have been running their processes. Common routines don’t exist anymore, and new routines have to be installed. Business transformation does not happen overnight.

05 Nov

What is the best enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and why?

AbnAsia.org

There is no single best ERP system. No single system or for that matter, ERP vendor, can scale to fit all of the needs of different companies competing in different industries, relying on completely different supply chains, pricing and business models.

Consider the facts:

Between 20% and 35% of all ERP implementations fail, and up to 80% exceed time and budget estimates (1).
Between 50% and 60% of ERP implementations are compromised from their original goals as companies find implementing the software and changing processes too difficult versus what was originally promised by their vendor (1).
ERP project success requires a focus on people and process, as well as the software. Ignoring these aspects will cause your project to fail (1).
Failure of an ERP implementation is defined as not achieving the business goals the systems were acquired and installed to do (1).

The best ERP system for a given business steers clears of these failure points by being precisely aligned to unique business strategy needs. Selecting an ERP system needs to include extensive vetting or evaluation of vendors and what they really can do, not what they say they can.

Trust references in your industry over data sheets; believe the CIOs who bet their careers on a comparable ERP system you are looking at. Be wary of overpromising from vendors and hype.

The five reasons ERP systems fail are:

Extensive modifications not mentioned or unknown by the vendor before the project began
Lack of executive management commitment
Insufficient or inadequate budgeting
Inadequate change management and training
Inexperienced project management and project team

The best ERP systems have these attributes:

Solid, proven expertise in your industry with customer references you can talk to and visit to see how the ERP system is contributing to their business.
You should be able to find a CIO, Project Leader (VP level typically) who bet theirs and their teams’ jobs on the implementation. You know an ERP system is perfect for your needs when you find a company who did bet jobs on the implementation and won with the system you are looking at.
Deep expertise not only in your industry but also in the business processes you are looking to automate.
Professional Services staff that has expertise on rapid deployments and can meet project deadlines.
Strong change management expertise.
Expertise with systems integration and the ability to map or value stream map your processes to show how automating them will lead to greater performance and profitability gains.
Willing to allow for pilots to test out the system and ensure it is functioning correctly in the key process areas of interest.
Service Level Agreements (SLA) that are real and have commitments to you the customer first, over just protecting the vendor.
Financial viability of the vendor is strong and they will be able to stay in business for a decade, as the majority of ERP systems are installed a minimum of seven years.
High level of customer satisfaction in their customer base, and an active community.

04 Nov

What is the story of the Pets.com failure?

Pets.com began operating in August 1998. Full details of how much was raised is sketchy, but there was a US$10.5m round in March 1999 from, amongst others, Amazon.com. This was soon followed by another round of US$100m.

In February 2000, just before the dot com crash, it raised a further US$82.5m by IPO giving it a post-money valuation of US$290m.

The sock puppet became Pet.com’s much-marketed mascot.

But the sock’s fame didn’t last long.

9 months after the IPO Pets.com was shut down.

So what went wrong?

It spent way too much money, particularly on advertising including an ad at the 2000 Super Bowl, and was losing money on limited sales. From February to September 1999 alone it spent $12m on advertising but revenue was only $600k, and things got ramped up from there.

It was reckless spending – thinking too big before getting the basics right. Barking obvious, really.

In March 2000 the dot com bubble burst and then it couldn’t raise any more cash.

This new dog couldn’t learn old tricks…

by Asim Qureshi, CEO LaunchPad

27 Oct

Hashgraph – A new vampire was born

A new vampire is born: a distributed ledger technology that is not heavy and not slow (Blockchain’s problems).

Blockchain Just Became Obsolete. The Future is Hashgraph.

Blockchain Just Became Obsolete. The Future is Hashgraph

Swirlds is a software platform that has developed the hashgraph consensus algorithm: an entirely new distributed ledger technology that is much more cost-effective (no proof-of-work), 50,000 times the speed, safer (Byzantine), more efficient (no stale blocks) and mathematically fairer than the blockchain.

This is the future of the internet and decentralized technology.

……

What is Blockchain Technology?

Considered the greatest technological innovation since the internet: Blockchain technology emerged in response to the collapse of several banking institutions in 2008 with the release of a whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto titled: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

“…blockchain technology facilitates peer-to-peer transactions without any intermediary such as a bank or governing body …”

– Don Tapscott

Blockchain is simply a database that is public (no one owns it), distributed (no centralized server), is continuously updated, and is secured by the art of cryptography.

This is why Jamie Dimon is freaking out. Banks will soon be obsolete.

What is Hashgraph and Why is it Better?

Hashgraph is a superior distributed ledger technology system that eliminates the need for massive computation and unsustainable energy consumption like those of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Most importantly, it is able to reach a consensus. (I’ll explain why this is so critical)

50,000 Times Faster: limited only by bandwidth – 250,000+ Transactions Per Second (Pre-Sharding)

As of now Bitcoin is limited to 7 transactions per second.

More Fair: mathematically proven fairness (via consensus time stamping) meaning no individual can manipulate the order of the transactions.

In the blockchain world, a miner can choose the order for which transactions occur in a block, can delay orders by placing them in future blocks, even stop them entirely from entering the system.

Consensus time stamping prevents an individual from affecting the consensus order of transactions.

Once an event occurs, everyone knows about it within a couple of minutes. Only the effects of the transaction are necessary in storing, everything else can be discarded. This shrinks the amount of storage currently needed (Bitcoin: 60GB) to a fraction of 1GB, allowing a smart phone to now act as a node.

Improved Security: Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant: No member can prevent the community from reaching a consensus, nor can they change the consensus once it has been reached.

With Byzantine, a consensus can be reached, whereas in the blockchain world, it is only a probability that increases over time.

If no consensus is ever reached, conflicts will always occur. This is why hard forks that result in alt coins, such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold are occurring.

100% Efficient: No mined block ever becomes stale.

In the blockchain, transactions are put into containers (blocks) that form a single, long chain. If two miners create two blocks at the same time, the community will eventually choose one and discard the other.

In hashgraph, every container is used and none are discarded.

Inexpensive: avoids proof-of-work (PoW), meaning it does not have to waste computations to slow itself down, therefore the expensive, custom hardware is no longer necessary.

In the blockchain, if new blocks arrive too quickly they can be discarded. This is why Bitcoin is currently PoW, as this artificially slows down the mining process – hence the expensive hardware needed to mine.

With hashgraph, every member can create transactions and containers whenever they want.

Update: A message left by the Hashgraph team that explains a bit better how this all works:

Note that we are our own consensus algorithm. While Ethereum is looking at PoS with Casper, our algorithm uses something called Virtual Voting – its a voting system – without having to do the votes. Hashgraph uses a protocol called “Gossip about Gossip” to achieve consensus. Gossip is a well known computer science term, which can be defined as calling any random node and telling that node everything you know, that it does not know. In distributed ledger technology the “baseline” or minimum bandwidth required is that the transactions go to every node. Gossip about Gossip refers to attaching a small additional amount of information to this Gossip, which contains the last person we talked to, hence, we are gossiping about the information we gossiped. Using this information, we can build the Hashgraph. Once we have the Hashgraph, it is extremely easy to know what a node would vote, because we know what each node knows, and when they knew it. We now can use the data from the Hashgraph as an input to 30 year old voting algorithms, and achieve consensus essentially for free. These 30 year old voting algorithms have strong math proofs- they are Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant, which means we know when we will achieve consensus, guaranteed, and our math proofs make no assumptions about the speed of the internet, due to firewalls, ddos attacks, viruses or botnets. In addition, because of gossip about gossip, Hashgraph is extremely fast, (250,000 transactions/sec), and we also get fair ordering and time stamping on every event.

Central banks were losing with blockchain.

Hashgraph is a missile in the coffin.