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Nielsen Holdings Files Initial Form 10 Registration Statement For Proposed Spin-Off Of Global Connect Business

NIELSEN HOLDINGS has filed an initial Form 10 Registration Statement with the U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION in connection with the Company's proposed separation of the NIELSEN … more




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NI business running free online relaxation classes for kids

Something different for the kids to enjoy




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Belfast Live Twitter call out to promote NI businesses returns this week

Our first Twitter shout event was hugely popular so if you missed out then now is your chance to #ShareTheBiz




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88rising Presents Asia Rising Forever Live Stream

88RISING presented ASIA RISING FOREVER, an online live stream fundraising festival last night (5/6) featuring performances by many of their artists and other ASIAN recording acts from around … more




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Diagnosing and treating resistant hypertension

Statement Highlight: Resistant blood pressure affects 12 percent to 15 percent of people currently being treated for high blood pressure.




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El sector sin fines de lucro pide al Congreso que incluya la “vía sin fines de lucro” en la Ley CARES 2.0

Sala de prensa de la AHA sobre el COVID-19 WASHINGTON, D. C., 9 de abril del 2020— Las organizaciones sin fines de lucro de la nación están en la primera línea en nuestras comunidades durante la pandemia del COVID-19. Trabajan sin cesar para servir a...




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Study finds trend toward benefit in using blood-clotting agent for bleeding stroke

Research Highlights: There are few treatment options for bleeding stroke. There was a trend towards reduced growth of brain bleeds in those treated with the antifibrinolytic agent tranexamic acid within 4.5 hours of stroke onset, compared to those ...




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Surgeons successfully treat brain aneurysms using a robot

Research Highlights: A robot was used to treat brain aneurysms for the first time. The robotic system could eventually allow remote surgery, enabling surgeons to treat strokes from afar. Embargoed until 11:15 a.m. Pacific Time / 2:15 p.m. Eastern ...




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Online business exchange creates community, makes critical connections to meet needs during COVID-19 pandemic

DALLAS, April 29, 2020 — As the shortage of many goods, resources and services grows during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the American Heart Association, the leading nonprofit organization focused on a world of healthier lives for all, has launched ...




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7 Online Business Ideas That You Can Start With Just WordPress Plugins

As the time passes by, the online businesses are growing rapidly with the support of already available online business platforms, plugins etc. And to Achieve the same, WordPress is much louder than anything else around to fulfill the required online business existence without any boundaries and limitations....

The post 7 Online Business Ideas That You Can Start With Just WordPress Plugins appeared first on SmashingApps.com.




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10 Beautifully Designed, Minimal & Name-Centric Business Cards

Sometimes all you need is a name. It is a powerful thing. It always has a meaning and, even more, it has a subtext and undertone. A name can speak...

The post 10 Beautifully Designed, Minimal & Name-Centric Business Cards appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.




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A Guide to Using Commercial WordPress Themes and Plugins

The WordPress ecosystem is chock full of outstanding free software. Why, you could build an entire website using an attractive free theme and a selection of highly-functional plugins. But free...

The post A Guide to Using Commercial WordPress Themes and Plugins appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.




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Why Using WordPress Addons Will Benefit Your Business Website

Using WordPress for a business website is one of the best choices you can make as a business. It’s easy to get a site online and configured with a theme in under an hour. This is why WordPress now powers 35 percent of the websites on the internet. If you’re new to WordPress and don’t know why using WordPress plugins is helpful, this post will help. Below are seven benefits your business website will see when using plugins from the WordPress ecosystem. 1. Communicate With Customers It’s hard to run a business if your customers have no way to get

The post Why Using WordPress Addons Will Benefit Your Business Website appeared first on Photoshop Lady.




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The 5 Best Medical WordPress Theme for Your Business

Building a website for your medical practice doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think. You can still get great results by using a website template without using a lot of time or money. WordPress offers a wide selection of themes for medical blogs and websites. Check out the 5 best medical wordpress theme for you business below. Clinico Clinco is a great medical wordpress theme for a variety of reasons. It has a very clean look with simple features that make the layout perfect for medical professionals. The Clinico theme is responsive and has graphics that are “retina

The post The 5 Best Medical WordPress Theme for Your Business appeared first on Photoshop Lady.




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WordPress Development: Bypassing the Settings API

The following is a guest post by Andy Walpole. There are many parts of the Wordpress API which are fantastic but there are also other parts which, I would argue, are lacking. The Settings API was introduced in version 2.7 to allow the semi-automation of form creation. All credible Content Management Systems and frameworks have their own set of functions or classes for the same purpose. Drupal has a multitude of hooks which can be leveraged, while CodeIgniter uses a combination of the Form Validation Class and the Form Helper . When creating a Wordpress plugin recently I wanted to create a dynamic form to insert data into a field in the option database table. I decided to create a class for this purpose with the intention of creating reusable code for future projects.




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Amazing Photos Of “Luxurious” Lada Stretched Limousines

Lada is a brand of cars manufactured by Russian automobile manufacturer AvtoVAZ (originally VAZ). The Lada brand appeared in 1973,...




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Turn Your Hobby into a Business in 8 Steps

Hobbies can be more than fun, they can make you money, too. Read our eight-step guide to learn how to turn your hobby into a business & make money online!

The post Turn Your Hobby into a Business in 8 Steps appeared first on WooCommerce.






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Ready to reopen? Four Cedar Rapids business leaders offer advice

On Wednesday, Gov. Kim Reynolds removed some restrictions on businesses in the 22 counties that have been seeing higher numbers of Iowans affected by COVID-19, including Linn and Johnson counties....




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Mauro: Favor working people over business owners

“Past performance is no indication of future results.”

That’s a favorite mantra of many business analysts. It may be true when pondering statistics. But when considering people, it’s a false positive. You certainly can predict how people will perform, based on what they’ve said and done.

For example, if a business owner has historically forced employees to work in hazardous conditions for minimum wage, it’s no surprise that now, they are compelling workers to choose between risking their health even further or go without a meager paycheck.

If elected officials have historically favored those business owners over working people, it’s no surprise that now, they are threatening to deny unemployment benefits to those workers who don’t return to their hazardous jobs.

Those historically silent about this and other injustices are remaining silent now — and we shouldn’t expect anything different from them.

I have been a business owner for nearly three decades, but I am pro-people.

Because I made personal concessions during the Great Recession, no one at UIG, the property and casualty insurance agency where I am president, lost their job. I have done the same this year with COVID-19. And will do it again to put my employees first.

Because I believe in workers’ right to organize, I supported my campaign staff’s successful effort to unionize with the Campaign Workers Guild, becoming the first senate campaign in Iowa to do so. This guarantees they receive a dignified living wage, get paid time off, unlimited paid sick leave, and fully paid health insurance. We did this together. Which is the way business should work.

On the contrary, the lobbyist-backed candidate, Theresa Greenfield, bankrupted her company in 2013, and went on to evict several small businesses with Colby Interests so she could replace their storefronts with an Aldi. We all have seen what happens with a real estate developer in power, and it has certainly not benefited hardworking Iowans.

COVID has revealed fissures in America’s bedrock. To fix the cracks, we need leaders who have proved they can craft solutions to assure every worker of a dignified wage, a safe workplace, paid time off and sick leave, and affordable, accessible health care.

These days have taught us that past performance certainly is an indication of future results. We need to look closely at what someone has said and done when considering what they may say and do in office.

Eddie Mauro is a candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.




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Lensing: Leadership on education funding, mental health and accessible voting

Serving as state representative of House District 85 for the past few years has been a privilege and an honor. I have worked hard to stand for the people of my district fighting for issues that are important to them and to the voters of Iowa City. I want to continue that advocacy and am running for another term in the Iowa House and ask for your vote.

I vigorously support adequate funding for education from pre-school to our community colleges and universities. Our young people are Iowa’s future and deserve the best start available through our excellent education system in Iowa. But we need to provide the dollars necessary to keep our teachers in the classroom so our children are prepared for whatever may lie ahead of them.

I have advocated for the fair treatment of workers in Iowa and support their right to organize. I have worked on laws for equal pay for equal work and whistle blower protection.

I am for essential funding for mental health services for Iowans of all ages. Children and adults who are struggling with mental health issues should have services available to them no matter where they live in this state.

I have fought to keep government open and accessible to Iowans. I support open records and open meetings laws to ensure that availability and transparency to all Iowans.

Keeping voting easy and accessible to voters has been a priority of mine. I support a fair and balanced redistricting system for voting in Iowa.

I have advocated to keep the bottle deposit law in place and expand it to cover the many new types of containers available.

I have worked on oversight legislation after several investigations into defrauding government which involved boarding homes, government agencies and pharmacy benefit managers (the “middleman” between pharmacies/Medicaid and the healthcare insurance companies.)

I cannot avoid mentioning the challenge of the coronavirus in Iowa. It has impacted our health, jobs, families and businesses. No one could have predicted this pandemic but as Iowans, we need to do our best to limit contact and the spread of this disease. My sincere appreciation goes to those workers on the frontlines of this crisis: the healthcare workers, store owners, businesses, farmers, teachers and workers who show up every day to keep this state moving forward. Thank you all!

There is still much work to be done to keep Iowa the great place where we live, work and raise our families. I am asking for your vote to allow me the privilege of continuing that work.

Vicki Lensing is a candidate in the Democratic primary for Iowa House District 85.




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How a bad hosting company can impact your business website

With the throng of websites on the internet vying for people’s attention, it will be hard to stand out if you don’t have an appealing or dependable business website. Investing in building your own website and acquiring a reliable domain and web hosting provider are some of the things you must do right to make […] More




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How to Duplicate WordPress Database using phpMyAdmin

Do you want to duplicate your WordPress database using phpMyAdmin? WordPress stores all your website data in a MySQL database. Sometimes you may need to quickly clone a WordPress database to transfer a website or to create manual backups.




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Ready to reopen? Four Cedar Rapids business leaders offer advice

On Wednesday, Gov. Kim Reynolds removed some restrictions on businesses in the 22 counties that have been seeing higher numbers of Iowans affected by COVID-19, including Linn and Johnson counties.

Now those organizations have to make decisions — on bringing back employees, services to provide and how much access to allow for customers.

And as those businesses reopen — some after more than two months — crucial steps likely will include ongoing communication with employees and customers and a well-thought-out restart plan.

The Gazette spoke with business leaders about the challenges faced by business owners as they consider how and when to open their doors.

• David Drewelow of ActionCoach Heartland in Cedar Rapids is a consultant with 19 years of business coaching experience.

• David Hensley, director of the University of Iowa’s John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, has expertise in small business management during a crisis.

• Josh Seamans is vice president of Cushman and Wakefield, a global commercial real estate adviser that operates offices in more than 60 countries including China.

• Steve Shriver is a Cedar Rapids entrepreneur who operates and/or helped found four diverse enterprises, including Eco Lips and Brewhemia.

Their responses here have been condensed from lengthy individual interviews.

How important is communication and having a well-prepared plan for resumption of business?

Shriver: The one thing that has been imperative throughout this whole process is communication with employees, customers and the public. I also would recommend writing as detailed a business resumption plan as possible.

One of the main reasons is to fully understand what you are doing as this is a brand-new challenge that none of us has faced.

Drewelow: You really need to be communicating now, more than ever, with your employees, customers, vendors and suppliers. What does your plan for the next 20 to 30 days look like? What are things that you can be doing right now to get ready?

Hensley: I think it is critically important to have a reopening plan because most businesses are not going to be at full strength right away. What might their revenue forecasts look like? How can they keep their costs down as their business starts to rebound before it gets back to full capacity?

Seamans: Your plan should include a checklist of reopening steps appropriate to your type of business. Retail will have different items than distribution or industrial businesses.

You need to communicate your plan to employees, customers, landlords and lenders.

How much will fear play a role in the resumption of business?

Shriver: Everyone has a different idea of the risks involved, such as using a handle to open a door or interacting with a person — the little things that we are used to doing.

When you look at the risk versus reward of doing that, some people will be willing to go into a store and others will stay home. Some employees don’t want to come back to work yet and some people are itching to get back. You have everything in between.

Drewelow: The fear factor is huge. For the small business owner, we try to channel that fear into a focus on being highly aware of all the possibilities to mitigate concerns.

If you own a restaurant, can you post the menu online or use disposable menus? That way, a customer doesn’t have to touch something that might have been handled by someone else.

Appropriate spacing of customers within a restaurant also will help alleviate some of the fear.

Hensley: You need to communicate what steps you are taking to protect the health and safety of your employees and your customers. If you will be requiring the use of personal protective equipment like face masks, are you going to make them available?

Will limiting the number of people entering a business be difficult?

Shriver: There are not a lot of people who want to gather in masses right now. It seems like as businesses start to reopen, it will be more like a trickle.

It will be just like turning on a water spigot, with the flow of customers gradually increasing.

Hensley: I think we will see a lot more customers buying, rather than just shopping. They are going to buy the items they came for and then leave.

If businesses have more vulnerable customers, I would recommend establishing separate early morning times like many of the grocery stores have done to provide a safer environment.

Many companies have adopted using digital conferencing platforms for meetings. Will we see that trend continue?

Seamans: I think Zoom will be used for more internal meetings, so there is no need for someone to fly from, say, San Francisco to New York. But in terms of sales, it does not replicate that face-to-face interaction.

We have done work with clients that live several hours away and we have to come in for a city council meeting for a project that we are working on. That’s a three-hour drive in for a one- or two-hour council meeting and another three-hour drive back — basically an eight-hour day. If we can Zoom in and answer any questions, that’s a lot more efficient at less cost.

What should a small-business owner consider when determining how many employees to recall?

Shriver: We will be able to bring some people back to work and generate some revenue, but not in a huge way. Anybody who can work from home should continue working from home for as long as they possibly can.

We should not be rushing to get those people back. There is no incentive.

Hensley: Owners are going to be making hard decisions. Do I bring back half of my team at full time or do I bring everyone back at reduced hours? What are those implications going to be?

In some cases, other industries have been hiring and some may be making more money. Businesses may have to pay more to attract that talent back.

Restaurants have been forced to change their business model from on-premise dining to carryout and delivery. Should all owners take this opportunity to examine and update their business model?

Shriver: We took two businesses — SOKO Outfitters, a retail store, and Brewhemia, a restaurant — and put them rapidly online within a month. When we come out of this, I think we will be stronger because we will have that infrastructure in place in addition to the old school face to face traffic that we used to have.

Hensley: I think this is definitely the time to look at your business model to determine what is appropriate given the economic situation that we have. That is not just going to be critical for reopening, but over the next six months to a year as long as we are dealing with the virus.

Some business owners will see that their customers have lost their jobs or seen their income drop dramatically. They are going to be changing their patterns of consumption based on necessities.

Drewelow: Some of my clients believe that are looking their competitors and realize that some may not reopen. They are looking at whether they can merge with them or somehow salvage parts of that business.

Some business owners have realized that the way they deliver products or services will have to change. Many of my older clients have been dragged into using modern technology.




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Missing Berlin’s gorgeous buildings again. ???? (at Berlin,...



Missing Berlin’s gorgeous buildings again. ???? (at Berlin, Germany)




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And while we’re in the process of missing European...



And while we’re in the process of missing European architecture… ????

4 more days left to catch my Lightroom presets for 50% off! ⌛️ (at Copenhagen, Denmark)




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Dynamic Range Processing in Audio Post Production

If listeners find themselves using the volume up and down buttons a lot, level differences within your podcast or audio file are too big.
In this article, we are discussing why audio dynamic range processing (or leveling) is more important than loudness normalization, why it depends on factors like the listening environment and the individual character of the content, and why the loudness range descriptor (LRA) is only reliable for speech programs.

Photo by Alexey Ruban.

Why loudness normalization is not enough

Everybody who has lived in an apartment building knows the problem: you want to enjoy a movie late at night, but you're constantly on the edge - not only because of the thrilling story, but because your index finger is hovering over the volume down button of your remote. The next loud sound effect is going to come sooner rather than later, and you want to avoid waking up your neighbors with some gunshot sounds blasting from your TV.

In our previous post, we talked about the overall loudness of a production. While that's certainly important to keep in mind, the loudness target is only an average value, ignoring how much the loudness varies within a production. The loudness target of your movie might be in the ideal range, yet the level differences between a gunshot and someone whispering can still be enormous - having you turn the volume down for the former and up for the latter.

While the average loudness might be perfect, level differences can lead to an unpleasant listening experience.

Of course, this doesn't apply to movies alone. The image above shows a podcast or radio production. The loud section is music, the very quiet section just breathing, and the remaining sections are different voices.

To be clear, we're not saying that the above example is problematic per se. There are many situations, where a big difference in levels - a high dynamic range - is justified: for instance, in a movie theater, optimized for listening and without any outside noise, or in classical music.
Also, if the dynamic range is too small, listening can be tiring.

But if you watch the same movie in an outdoor screening in the summer on a beach next to the crashing waves or in the middle of a noisy city, it can be tricky to hear the softer parts.
Spoken word usually has a smaller dynamic range, and if you produce your podcast for a target audience of train or car commuters, the dynamic range should be even smaller, adjusting for the listening situation.

Therefore, hitting the loudness target has less impact on the listening experience than level differences (dynamic range) within one file!
What makes a suitable dynamic range does not only depend on the listening environment, but also on the nature of the content itself. If the dynamic range is too small, the audio can be tiring to listen to, whereas more variability in levels can make a program more interesting, but might not work in all environments, such as a noisy car.

Dynamic range experiment in a car

Wolfgang Rein, audio technician at SWR, a public broadcaster in Germany, did an experiment to test how drivers react to programs with different dynamic ranges. They monitored to what level drivers set the car stereo depending on speed (thus noise level) and audio dynamic range.
While the results are preliminary, it seems like drivers set the volume as low as possible so that they can still understand the content, but don't get distracted by loud sounds.

As drivers adjust the volume to the loudest voice in a program, they won't understand quieter speakers in content with a high dynamic range anymore. To some degree and for short periods of time, they can compensate by focusing more on the radio program, but over time that's tiring. Therefore, if the loudness varies too much, drivers tend to switch to another program rather than adjusting the volume.
Similar results have been found in a study conducted by NPR Labs and Towson University.

On the other hand, the perception was different in pure music programs. When drivers set the volume according to louder parts, they weren't able to hear softer segments or the beginning of a song very well. But that did not matter to them as much and didn't make them want to turn up the volume or switch the program.

Listener's reaction in response to frequent loudness changes. (from John Kean, Eli Johnson, Dr. Ellyn Sheffield: Study of Audio Loudness Range for Consumers in Various Listening Modes and Ambient Noise Levels)

Loudness comfort zone

The reaction of drivers to variable loudness hints at something that BBC sound engineer Mike Thornton calls the loudness comfort zone.

Tests (...) have shown that if the short-term loudness stays within the "comfort zone" then the consumer doesn’t feel the need to reach for the remote control to adjust the volume.
In a blog post, he highlights how the series Blue Planet 2 and Planet Earth 2 might not always have been the easiest to listen to. The graph below shows an excerpt with very loud music, followed by commentary just at the bottom of the green comfort zone. Thornton writes: "with the volume set at a level that was comfortable when the music was playing we couldn’t always hear the excellent commentary from Sir David Attenborough and had to resort to turning on the subtitles to be sure we knew what Sir David was saying!"

Planet Earth 2 Loudness Plot Excerpt. Colored green: comfort zone of +3 to -5LU around the loudness target. (from Mike Thornton: BBC Blue Planet 2 Latest Show In Firing Line For Sound Issues - Are They Right?)

As already mentioned above, a good mix considers the maximum and minimum possible loudness in the target listening environment.
In a movie theater the loudness comfort zone is big (loudness can vary a lot), and loud music is part of the fun, while quiet scenes work just as well. The opposite was true in the aforementioned experiment with drivers, where the loudness comfort zone is much smaller and quiet voices are difficult to understand.

Hence, the loudness comfort zone determines how much dynamic range an audio signal can use in a specific listening environment.

How to measure dynamic range: LRA

When producing audio for various environments, it would be great to have a target value for dynamic range, (the difference between the smallest and largest signal values of an audio signal) as well. Then you could just set a dynamic range target, similarly to a loudness target.

Theoretically, the maximum possible dynamic range of a production is defined by the bit-depth of the audio format. A 16-bit recording can have a dynamic range of 96 dB; for 24-bit, it's 144 dB - which is well above the approx. 120 dB the human ear can handle. However, most of those bits are typically being used to get to a reasonable base volume. Picture a glass of water: you want it to be almost full, with some headroom so that it doesn't spill when there's a sudden movement, i.e. a bigger amplitude wave at the top.

Determining the dynamic range of a production is easier said than done, though. It depends on which signals are included in the measurement: for example, if something like background music or breathing should be considered at all.
The currently preferred method for broadcasting is called Loudness Range, LRA. It is measured in Loudness Units (LU), and takes into account everything between the 10th and the 95th percentile of a loudness distribution, after an additional gating method. In other words, the loudest 5% and quietest 10% of the audio signal are being ignored. This way, quiet breathing or an occasional loud sound effect won't affect the measurement.

Loudness distribution and LRA for the film 'The Matrix'. Figure from EBU Tech Doc 3343 (p.13).

However, the main difficulty is which signals should be included in the loudness range measurement and which ones should be gated. This is unfortunately often very subjective and difficult to define with a purely statistical method like LRA.

Where LRA falls short

Therefore, only pure speech programs give reliable LRA values that are comparable!
For instance, a typical LRA for news programs is 3 LU; for talks and discussions 5 LU is common. LRA values for features, radio dramas, movies or music very much depend on the individual character and might be in the range between 5 and 25 LU.

To further illustrate this, here are some typical LRA values, according to a paper by Thomas Lund (table 2):

ProgramLoudness Range
Matrix, full movie25.0
NBC Interstitials, Jan. 2008, all together (3:30)9.4
Friends Episode 166.6
Speak Ref., Male, German, SQUAM Trk 546.2
Speak Ref., Female, French, SQUAM Trk 514.8
Speak Ref., Male, English, Sound Check3.3
Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd22.1
Gilgamesh, Battle of Titans, Osaka Symph.19.7
Don’t Cry For Me Arg., Sinead O’Conner13.7
Beethoven Son in F, Op17, Kliegel & Tichman12.0
Rock’n Roll Train, AC/DC6.0
I.G.Y., Donald Fagen3.6

LRA values of music are very unpredictable as well.
For instance, Tom Frampton measured the LRA of songs in multiple genres, and the differences within each genre are quite big. The ten pop songs that he analyzed varied in LRA between 3.7 and 12 LU, country songs between 3.6 and 14.9 LU. In the Electronic genre the individual LRAs were between 3.7 and 15.2 LU. Please see the tables at the bottom of his blog post for more details.

We at Auphonic also tried to base our Adaptive Leveler parameters on the LRA descriptor. Although it worked, it turned out that it is very difficult to set a loudness range target for diverse audio content, which does include speech, background sounds, music parts, etc. The results were not predictable and it was hard to find good target values. Therefore we developed our own algorithm to measure the dynamic range of audio signals.

In conclusion, LRA comparisons are only useful for productions with spoken word only and the LRA value is therefore not applicable as a general dynamic range target value. The more complex a production gets, the more difficult it is to make any judgment based on the LRA.
This is, because the definition of LRA is purely statistical. There's no smart measurement using classifiers that distinguish between music, speech, quiet breathing, background noises and other types of audio. One would need a more intelligent algorithm (as we use in our Adaptive Leveler), that knows which audio segments should be included and excluded from the measurement.

From theory to application: tools

Loudness and dynamic range clearly is a complicated topic. Luckily, there are tools that can help. To keep short-term loudness in range, a compressor can help control sudden changes in loudness - such as p-pops or consonants like t or k. To achieve a good mid-term loudness, i.e. a signal that doesn't go outside the comfort zone too much, a leveler is a good option. Or, just use a fader or manually adjust volume curves. And to make sure that separate productions sound consistent, loudness normalization is the way to go. We have covered all of this in-depth before.

Looking at the audio from above again, with an adaptive leveler applied it looks like this:

Leveler example. Output at the top, input with leveler envelope at the bottom.

Now, the voices are evened out and the music is at a comfortable level, while the breathing has not been touched at all.
We recently extended Auphonic's adaptive leveler, so that it is now possible to customize the dynamic range - please see adaptive leveler customization and advanced multitrack audio algorithms.
If you wanted to increase the loudness comfort zone (or dynamic range) of the standard preset by 10 dB (or LU), for example, the envelope would look like this:

Leveler with higher dynamic range, only touching sections with extremely low or extremely high loudness to fit into a specific loudness comfort zone.

When a production is done, our adaptive leveler uses classifiers to also calculate the integrated loudness and loudness range of dialog and music sections separately. This way it is possible to just compare the dialog LRA and loudness of complex productions.

Assessing the LRA and loudness of dialog and music separately.

Conclusion

Getting audio dynamics right is not easy. Yet, it is an important thing to keep in mind, because focusing on loudness normalization alone is not enough. In fact, hitting the loudness target often has less impact on the listening experience than level differences, i.e. audio dynamics.

If the dynamic range is too small, the audio can be tiring to listen to, whereas a bigger dynamic range can make a program more interesting, but might not work in loud environments, such as a noisy train.
Therefore, a good mix adapts the audio dynamic range according to the target listening environment (different loudness comfort zones in cinema, at home, in a car) and according to the nature of the content (radio feature, movie, podcast, music, etc.).

Furthermore, because the definition of the loudness range / LRA is purely statistical, only speech programs give reliable LRA values that are comparable.
More "intelligent" algorithms are in development, which use classifiers to decide which signals should be included and excluded from the dynamic range measurement.

If you understand German, take a look at our presentation about audio dynamic processing in podcasts for further information:







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TrailBuddy: Using AI to Create a Predictive Trail Conditions App

Viget is full of outdoor enthusiasts and, of course, technologists. For this year's Pointless Weekend, we brought these passions together to build TrailBuddy. This app aims to solve that eternal question: Is my favorite trail dry so I can go hike/run/ride?

While getting muddy might rekindle fond childhood memories for some, exposing your gear to the elements isn’t great – it’s bad for your equipment and can cause long-term, and potentially expensive, damage to the trail.

There are some trail apps out there but we wanted one that would focus on current conditions. Currently, our favorites trail apps, like mtbproject.com, trailrunproject.com, and hikingproject.com -- all owned by REI, rely on user-reported conditions. While this can be effective, the reports are frequently unreliable, as condition reports can become outdated in just a few days.

Our goal was to solve this problem by building an app that brought together location, soil type, and weather history data to create on-demand condition predictions for any trail in the US.

We built an initial version of TrailBuddy by tapping into several readily-available APIs, then running the combined data through a machine learning algorithm. (Oh, and also by bringing together a bunch of smart and motivated people and combining them with pizza and some of the magic that is our Pointless Weekends. We'll share the other Pointless Project, Scurry, with you soon.)

The quest for data.

We knew from the start this app would require data from a number of sources. As previously mentioned, we used REI’s APIs (i.e. https://www.hikingproject.com/data) as the source for basic trail information. We used the trails’ latitude and longitude coordinates as well as its elevation to query weather and soil type. We also found data points such as a trail’s total distance to be relevant to our app users and decided to include that on the front-end, too. Since we wanted to go beyond relying solely on user-reported metrics, which is how REI’s current MTB project works, we came up with a list of factors that could affect the trail for that day.

First on that list was weather.

We not only considered the impacts of the current forecast, but we also looked at the previous day’s forecast. For example, it’s safe to assume that if it’s currently raining or had been raining over the last several days, it would likely lead to muddy and unfavorable conditions for that trail. We utilized the DarkSky API (https://darksky.net/dev) to get the weather forecasts for that day, as well as the records for previous days. This included expected information, like temperature and precipitation chance. It also included some interesting data points that we realized may be factors, like precipitation intensity, cloud cover, and UV index. 

But weather alone can’t predict how muddy or dry a trail will be. To determine that for sure, we also wanted to use soil data to help predict how well a trail’s unique soil composition recovers after precipitation. Similar amounts of rain on trails of very different soil types could lead to vastly different trail conditions. A more clay-based soil would hold water much longer, and therefore be much more unfavorable, than loamy soil. Finding a reliable source for soil type and soil drainage proved incredibly difficult. After many hours, we finally found a source through the USDA that we could use. As a side note—the USDA keeps track of lots of data points on soil information that’s actually pretty interesting! We can’t say we’re soil experts but, we felt like we got pretty close.

We used Whimsical to build our initial wireframes.

Putting our design hats on.

From the very first pitch for this app, TrailBuddy’s main differentiator to peer trail resources is its ability to surface real-time information, reliably, and simply. For as complicated as the technology needed to collect and interpret information, the front-end app design needed to be clean and unencumbered.

We thought about how users would naturally look for information when setting out to find a trail and what factors they’d think about when doing so. We posed questions like:

  • How easy or difficult of a trail are they looking for?
  • How long is this trail?
  • What does the trail look like?
  • How far away is the trail in relation to my location?
  • For what activity am I needing a trail for?
  • Is this a trail I’d want to come back to in the future?

By putting ourselves in our users’ shoes we quickly identified key features TrailBuddy needed to have to be relevant and useful. First, we needed filtering, so users could filter between difficulty and distance to narrow down their results to fit the activity level. Next, we needed a way to look up trails by activity type—mountain biking, hiking, and running are all types of activities REI’s MTB API tracks already so those made sense as a starting point. And lastly, we needed a way for the app to find trails based on your location; or at the very least the ability to find a trail within a certain distance of your current location.

We used Figma to design, prototype, and gather feedback on TrailBuddy.

Using machine learning to predict trail conditions.

As stated earlier, none of us are actual soil or data scientists. So, in order to achieve the real-time conditions reporting TrailBuddy promised, we’d decided to leverage machine learning to make predictions for us. Digging into the utility of machine learning was a first for all of us on this team. Luckily, there was an excellent tutorial that laid out the basics of building an ML model in Python. Provided a CSV file with inputs in the left columns, and the desired output on the right, the script we generated was able to test out multiple different model strategies, and output the effectiveness of each in predicting results, shown below.

We assembled all of the historical weather and soil data we could find for a given latitude/longitude coordinate, compiled a 1000 * 100 sized CSV, ran it through the Python evaluator, and found that the CART and SVM models consistently outranked the others in terms of predicting trail status. In other words, we found a working model for which to run our data through and get (hopefully) reliable predictions from. The next step was to figure out which data fields were actually critical in predicting the trail status. The more we could refine our data set, the faster and smarter our predictive model could become.

We pulled in some Ruby code to take the original (and quite massive) CSV, and output smaller versions to test with. Now again, we’re no data scientists here but, we were able to cull out a good majority of the data and still get a model that performed at 95% accuracy.

With our trained model in hand, we could serialize that to into a model.pkl file (pkl stands for “pickle”, as in we’ve “pickled” the model), move that file into our Rails app along with it a python script to deserialize it, pass in a dynamic set of data, and generate real-time predictions. At the end of the day, our model has a propensity to predict fantastic trail conditions (about 99% of the time in fact…). Just one of those optimistic machine learning models we guess.

Where we go from here.

It was clear that after two days, our team still wanted to do more. As a first refinement, we’d love to work more with our data set and ML model. Something that was quite surprising during the weekend was that we found we could remove all but two days worth of weather data, and all of the soil data we worked so hard to dig up, and still hit 95% accuracy. Which … doesn’t make a ton of sense. Perhaps the data we chose to predict trail conditions just isn’t a great empirical predictor of trail status. While these are questions too big to solve in just a single weekend, we'd love to spend more time digging into this in a future iteration.



  • News & Culture

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Australia’s global talent visa for individuals and businesses

In late 2019 the Australian Government launched the Global Talent – Independent program which offers a streamlined, priority visa pathway for highly skilled and talented individuals to work and live permanently in Australia. There are two streams. The first is the Global Talent Independent Program (GTI) and the second is the Global Talent Employer Sponsored (GTES). […]

The post Australia’s global talent visa for individuals and businesses appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.




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If You’re Using Beaver Builder Lite, You Need This Addon

Hey there, I’m Ben, and I’m a guest author here at WPZOOM. Today I thought I’d share with you my experience of one of their rather awesome plugins, an addon for Beaver Builder. I know the team at WPZOOM are big fans of Beaver Builder, why not? It’s a great page builder with an excellent feature set; chances are if […]




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TrailBuddy: Using AI to Create a Predictive Trail Conditions App

Viget is full of outdoor enthusiasts and, of course, technologists. For this year's Pointless Weekend, we brought these passions together to build TrailBuddy. This app aims to solve that eternal question: Is my favorite trail dry so I can go hike/run/ride?

While getting muddy might rekindle fond childhood memories for some, exposing your gear to the elements isn’t great – it’s bad for your equipment and can cause long-term, and potentially expensive, damage to the trail.

There are some trail apps out there but we wanted one that would focus on current conditions. Currently, our favorites trail apps, like mtbproject.com, trailrunproject.com, and hikingproject.com -- all owned by REI, rely on user-reported conditions. While this can be effective, the reports are frequently unreliable, as condition reports can become outdated in just a few days.

Our goal was to solve this problem by building an app that brought together location, soil type, and weather history data to create on-demand condition predictions for any trail in the US.

We built an initial version of TrailBuddy by tapping into several readily-available APIs, then running the combined data through a machine learning algorithm. (Oh, and also by bringing together a bunch of smart and motivated people and combining them with pizza and some of the magic that is our Pointless Weekends. We'll share the other Pointless Project, Scurry, with you soon.)

The quest for data.

We knew from the start this app would require data from a number of sources. As previously mentioned, we used REI’s APIs (i.e. https://www.hikingproject.com/data) as the source for basic trail information. We used the trails’ latitude and longitude coordinates as well as its elevation to query weather and soil type. We also found data points such as a trail’s total distance to be relevant to our app users and decided to include that on the front-end, too. Since we wanted to go beyond relying solely on user-reported metrics, which is how REI’s current MTB project works, we came up with a list of factors that could affect the trail for that day.

First on that list was weather.

We not only considered the impacts of the current forecast, but we also looked at the previous day’s forecast. For example, it’s safe to assume that if it’s currently raining or had been raining over the last several days, it would likely lead to muddy and unfavorable conditions for that trail. We utilized the DarkSky API (https://darksky.net/dev) to get the weather forecasts for that day, as well as the records for previous days. This included expected information, like temperature and precipitation chance. It also included some interesting data points that we realized may be factors, like precipitation intensity, cloud cover, and UV index. 

But weather alone can’t predict how muddy or dry a trail will be. To determine that for sure, we also wanted to use soil data to help predict how well a trail’s unique soil composition recovers after precipitation. Similar amounts of rain on trails of very different soil types could lead to vastly different trail conditions. A more clay-based soil would hold water much longer, and therefore be much more unfavorable, than loamy soil. Finding a reliable source for soil type and soil drainage proved incredibly difficult. After many hours, we finally found a source through the USDA that we could use. As a side note—the USDA keeps track of lots of data points on soil information that’s actually pretty interesting! We can’t say we’re soil experts but, we felt like we got pretty close.

We used Whimsical to build our initial wireframes.

Putting our design hats on.

From the very first pitch for this app, TrailBuddy’s main differentiator to peer trail resources is its ability to surface real-time information, reliably, and simply. For as complicated as the technology needed to collect and interpret information, the front-end app design needed to be clean and unencumbered.

We thought about how users would naturally look for information when setting out to find a trail and what factors they’d think about when doing so. We posed questions like:

  • How easy or difficult of a trail are they looking for?
  • How long is this trail?
  • What does the trail look like?
  • How far away is the trail in relation to my location?
  • For what activity am I needing a trail for?
  • Is this a trail I’d want to come back to in the future?

By putting ourselves in our users’ shoes we quickly identified key features TrailBuddy needed to have to be relevant and useful. First, we needed filtering, so users could filter between difficulty and distance to narrow down their results to fit the activity level. Next, we needed a way to look up trails by activity type—mountain biking, hiking, and running are all types of activities REI’s MTB API tracks already so those made sense as a starting point. And lastly, we needed a way for the app to find trails based on your location; or at the very least the ability to find a trail within a certain distance of your current location.

We used Figma to design, prototype, and gather feedback on TrailBuddy.

Using machine learning to predict trail conditions.

As stated earlier, none of us are actual soil or data scientists. So, in order to achieve the real-time conditions reporting TrailBuddy promised, we’d decided to leverage machine learning to make predictions for us. Digging into the utility of machine learning was a first for all of us on this team. Luckily, there was an excellent tutorial that laid out the basics of building an ML model in Python. Provided a CSV file with inputs in the left columns, and the desired output on the right, the script we generated was able to test out multiple different model strategies, and output the effectiveness of each in predicting results, shown below.

We assembled all of the historical weather and soil data we could find for a given latitude/longitude coordinate, compiled a 1000 * 100 sized CSV, ran it through the Python evaluator, and found that the CART and SVM models consistently outranked the others in terms of predicting trail status. In other words, we found a working model for which to run our data through and get (hopefully) reliable predictions from. The next step was to figure out which data fields were actually critical in predicting the trail status. The more we could refine our data set, the faster and smarter our predictive model could become.

We pulled in some Ruby code to take the original (and quite massive) CSV, and output smaller versions to test with. Now again, we’re no data scientists here but, we were able to cull out a good majority of the data and still get a model that performed at 95% accuracy.

With our trained model in hand, we could serialize that to into a model.pkl file (pkl stands for “pickle”, as in we’ve “pickled” the model), move that file into our Rails app along with it a python script to deserialize it, pass in a dynamic set of data, and generate real-time predictions. At the end of the day, our model has a propensity to predict fantastic trail conditions (about 99% of the time in fact…). Just one of those optimistic machine learning models we guess.

Where we go from here.

It was clear that after two days, our team still wanted to do more. As a first refinement, we’d love to work more with our data set and ML model. Something that was quite surprising during the weekend was that we found we could remove all but two days worth of weather data, and all of the soil data we worked so hard to dig up, and still hit 95% accuracy. Which … doesn’t make a ton of sense. Perhaps the data we chose to predict trail conditions just isn’t a great empirical predictor of trail status. While these are questions too big to solve in just a single weekend, we'd love to spend more time digging into this in a future iteration.



  • News & Culture

sin

Best Business WordPress Themes

Kalium Kalium is an excellent WordPress theme that is intended for blogging and portfolio websites. It has plenty of layout design variations, along with an impressive drag and drop content builder. There are many features and elements, each designed to enhance your website and guarantee its success. Dalton A classy and clean theme for businesses […]

The post Best Business WordPress Themes appeared first on WP Theme Designer.




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What every business must do (and designers even more so)

What should all businesses do at least once, and do properly, and (like the title of this blog post suggests) designers need to do repeatedly? The answer is: Understanding the target market they’re catering to. Sure, that makes sense—but why are graphic designers any different? Why do this repeatedly? When you’re in business, you’re in the […]




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Creating a Block-based Theme Using Block Templates

This post outlines the steps I took to create a block-based theme version of Twenty Twenty. Thanks to Kjell Reigstad for helping develop the theme and write this post. There’s been a lot of conversation around how theme development changes as Full Site Editing using Gutenberg becomes a reality. Block templates are an experimental feature … Continue reading "Creating a Block-based Theme Using Block Templates"




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Good Cop & Bad Cop: Laying Down the Law and Keeping People Happy As an Independent Business Owner

Earlier this week I met up for coffee with a client of mine. The two of us originally met when his employeer was my client and after leaving that job he hired me to customize his personal blog and we formed our own client/designer relationship. I was excited when he emailed me last week with the […]




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My First Business Mentorship Meeting

Today was my very first one-on-one business mentorship meeting with Marie Poulin at Digital Strategy School. This was the first of what will be monthly 1 Hour sessions with Marie during the 6-month Digital Strategy School course and I can already tell these next 6 months are going to be a whirlwind! The course officially […]




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Let’s talk about how much I suck at business lately….

A couple weeks ago, I saw a tweet come through my Twitter timeline from my buddy Tim Smith, a designer and podcaster saying, “2014 was my worst year in freelance. My business revenue declined by ~10k.” I immediately related, but hesitated to reply. Who wants to talk about their failures? Business being slow is actually pretty […]




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Creating Choropleth Map Data Visualization Using JavaScript, on COVID-19 Stats

https://www.anychart.com/blog/2020/05/06/javascript-choropleth-map-tutorial/




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How To Build A Vue Survey App Using Firebase Authentication And Database

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/vue-survey-app-firebase-authentication-database/




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10 Websites and Apps All Designers Should Be Using

As a designer, we’re overloaded with choices every day, but there are some apps that are absolutely worth your time and investment. Finding the best ones and most useful ones can be a difficult task, so we’re going to make things easy for you and give you our top 10 apps and websites we couldn’t […]

Read More at 10 Websites and Apps All Designers Should Be Using




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Reducing brain damage in sport without losing the thrills

When Olympic gold medallist Shona McCallin was hit on the side of her head by a seemingly innocuous shoulder challenge, she suffered what was originally thought to be a concussion.




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Status Agen Casino Sbobet Resmi Bagi Bettor

Status sebagai agen Sbobet Casino terbaik yang diperoleh sebuah bandar judi online tidak didapatkan dengan mudah. Bandar tersebut harus memenuhi beberapa kriteria tertentu untuk menyandang status ini. Semua kriteria ini wajib dimiliki. Jika ada kurang satu saja, maka bandar tersebut tidak layak menyandang status yang terbaik, bahkan untuk menyebut diri mereka sendiri. Memang apa saja …

The post Status Agen Casino Sbobet Resmi Bagi Bettor appeared first on Situs Agen Judi Live Casino Online Indonesia Terpercaya.



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Cara Bergabung Bersama Judi Casino Sbobet Terpercaya

Belum pernah bermain judi sbobet online? Tenang saja, saya akan memberikan ulasan tentang bagaimana caranya untuk menjadi salah satu member di judi casino terpercaya. Untuk penjelasan yang lebih lengkap lagi, silahkan simak ulasan yang ada di bawah ini. Situs judi sbobet online memang menjadi favorit bagi para pemain saat ini. Ada banyak sekali orang yang …

The post Cara Bergabung Bersama Judi Casino Sbobet Terpercaya appeared first on Situs Agen Judi Live Casino Online Indonesia Terpercaya.



  • Judi Casino Terpercaya
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Permainan Situs Sbobet Casino Live Paling Populer

Siapa yang tidak mengenal dengan casino sbobet online? Tentu saja hampir semua orang mengenal permainan-permainan casino. Nah, jika kamu belum mengenal mengenai permainan casino, terutama tentang live casino, tidak usah bingung. Pada artikel yang ada di bawah ini akan menjelaskan tentang permainan live casino. Casino berkembang begitu pesat dan memiliki daya tarik yang sangat kuat …

The post Permainan Situs Sbobet Casino Live Paling Populer appeared first on Situs Agen Judi Live Casino Online Indonesia Terpercaya.



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Save time by using these builders for portfolio websites and pages

If you’re a professional wanting to showcase your products, what better way is there to do so than with a personal portfolio? Maybe one that’s presented in a way that invites close study? A portfolio used to be a folder of papers you would carry around with you when visiting one potential customer after another. […]

The post Save time by using these builders for portfolio websites and pages appeared first on WebAppers.




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Giveaway: 500 Holographic Raised Foil Business Cards – 100% Free

Print Peppermint is one of the most refreshingly creative online printers on the internet at the moment. Their endless range of high-end business cards with unique special finishes like: foil stamping, die-cutting, embossing, letterpress, and edge painting, coupled with a meticulously curated family of thick premium papers make them a rather deadly force. Move over Moo and […]

The post Giveaway: 500 Holographic Raised Foil Business Cards – 100% Free appeared first on WebAppers.




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Need Help Choosing the Right Plugin for Your Website? Check These Options

WordPress is an ideal platform for building your own portfolio, blog, or eCommerce site. It’s packed with all the basic tools you need to build a professional-looking site. Plus, it has tools that can take your web-building skills to an even higher level. Get even more impressive results or add features to a website that […]

The post Need Help Choosing the Right Plugin for Your Website? Check These Options appeared first on WebAppers.




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10 Step Tutorial: How to Design Flat Skateboards Using Adobe Illustrator

Summer is in full swing here in the states! It’s a perfect time to grab your skateboard and go cruising. Today we’re going to learn how to design flat skateboards and colorful vector longboards in Adobe Illustrator! We’ll be working with Clipping Masks, Stroke, and Pathfinder panel. Let’s get started! Tutorial Details Program: Adobe Illustrator CC Difficulty: […]

The post 10 Step Tutorial: How to Design Flat Skateboards Using Adobe Illustrator appeared first on Vectips.




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Create a NAS Icon in Just 30 Minutes Using Adobe Illustrator

Welcome back to another Illustrator tutorial from our retro hardware series! In this how-to, we’re going to learn to create a NAS Icon (or a Network-Attached Storage icon) using some simple geometric shapes and tools. So, get your software up and running let’s jump straight into it! Tutorial Details: How to Create a NAS Icon Program: Adobe […]

The post Create a NAS Icon in Just 30 Minutes Using Adobe Illustrator appeared first on Vectips.