2017 Home Design Trends: Log and Timber Homes

A new year is a fresh start, and where better to begin than right at home? It’s time to update the old and bring in the latest design trends.

The good news is that 2016’s more neutral, airy decor choices continue into 2017. However, this year’s style adds some bold and natural accents to create contrast in rooms.

You can expect to see more interiors that complement rustic charm with urban fashion, which is a nice fit for log or timber framed homes.

Here are the top home design trends to watch for in 2017:

Urban farmstead

A log or timber framed home defines this trend perfectly, mixing natural elements with urban accents. Organic wooden countertops and cupboards compliment clean white walls and floors, especially in kitchens. In the bathroom, natural stone, like marble flooring, contrasts with grey or black metallic fixtures and frames. (1)

Beige is back

This isn’t your parents’ beige. New, modern, airy shades are emerging. The reinvented versions keep the cozy warmth of blankets without the stuffy dated feeling. From furnishings to decorative wall paneling, homes will incorporate cooler shades of this classic colour. (1)

Yellow brightens up rooms

This cheerful colour is showing up more and more in design magazines. However, you won’t need your sunglasses. Bold yellows will only be used as accents, such as on cupboard doors. On whole walls, happy, muted shades will bring subtle sunrise shades inside. (2)

Greenery wins colour of the year

Pantone released its most popular colour of 2016: Greenery. As a continuation to the natural tone trends above, 2017 will have more green in colour palettes. Try it in a living room to create a calming oasis. (2)

Wilderness on the walls

Wall paper is a quick way to change the look of any room. Unlike 2016’s bold patterns and geometric prints, botanical designs are trending this year. Trees, flowers and artistic hand drawn pieces will bring inspiration from the wild to your walls. (2)

Bold backsplashes, romantic retreats

Pops of prominent colour in the kitchen, especially using tile backsplashes, contrast nicely with white surfaces and natural wood accents.2 In the bedroom, however, homeowners are split between more “intimate” or “cozy” tones. Some are choosing tranquil pastels while others select romantic reds and rich browns. (1)

DIY decor

Last year was a year of reclaimed and refinished furniture, and 2017 will step it up a notch. This time it’s less about rebuilding and more about repurposing. For instance, imagine converting a dresser into a bathroom vanity for a splash of unexpected interest. (1)

This year, homes embrace the peace of the outdoors, the city’s style, and colours that set the mood.

Gone are the days of dark “cabin-like” log homes. Like 2017’s decor, modern timber framed homes incorporate the latest finishings with timeless natural accents.

Looking for more home design inspiration? Check out our other articles:

• Designing Your Perfect Custom Home

• How to Choose the Right Log Home Design

• Top 7 Log Home Floor Plan Mistakes and How to Avoid them

• Log and Timber Home Plans
• Log and Timber Home Galleries

Sources:
1.Stone, M. (2016, December 20). Design experts say these will be the biggest trends in American homes in 2017. Business Insider.
2.Cook, K. (2016, December 20). Home decor trends for 2017 are all about ease, comfort. CTV News.

from Artisan Custom Log Homes http://ift.tt/2kN9ZaH

Upwork Modernization: An Overview

As a founder of oDesk—which has since evolved into Upwork—Stratis Karamanlakis has had a front seat view of Upwork’s evolution.

In this article, which is part of a series from Upwork Engineering, he talks about Upwork’s journey from fledgling startup to the largest website for freelancers, with a community of more than 17 million worldwide.

---

The Upwork technology stack has evolved dramatically over the last 11 years, growing into a website where millions of freelancers deliver services worth in excess of $1 billion. Like so many companies on a similar journey facing rapid growth, after years of incremental technology enhancements we decided we had to modernize our technology stack.

We knew the effort would be complex, require a number of years to complete, and involve cultural as well as technological changes. To ensure all stakeholders were aligned, we spent some time of introspection in order to define the problems we were trying to solve. This involved the following orthogonal issues:

1. Aging domain model: Our codebase and data models reflected 10+ years of incremental and often ad-hoc solutions that in varying degrees no longer corresponded to our current understanding of our business.
2. Monolithic system: The legacy middle-tier system was a monolith characterized by problems of scalability and performance, tangled dependencies, and poor resilience to failure. This also hurt us organizationally and culturally, since ownership boundaries were vague or missing.
3. Outdated technology: Our legacy middle-tier was based on Perl, which was a solid choice for web-scale systems a decade ago. Perl has not disappointed us in that regard, but ten years later it is no longer a popular application development language: Perl open-source libraries are the last to appear and are often poorly maintained, and few developers continue to be interested in it, which impacts our ability to recruit and retain top talent.
4. Architectural inconsistency: Ten years of evolution and the unavoidable technical debt had resulted in inconsistencies in nomenclature, design principles, protocol definitions, data types, you name it… This increased tremendously the cognitive load engineers needed to manage.

 

Microservices: A fine-grained approach

The nature of the problems above mandated an overhaul of how we developed software and operated our systems. We knew that our solution should give us the confidence that it can extend and grow as our business evolves, so that future modernization efforts could be more incremental.

We agreed to the following outline of our next generation middle-tier stack which we dubbed Agora (from Greek: “Αγορά”), meaning marketplace (pun intended).

What is Agora? Agora is

• A fine-grained services architecture that is
• Combined with a JVM-based core libraries stack.

It enables our engineering organization to standardize on

• Architecture style,
• Language and libraries, and
• Tools and processes used for development, testing, deployment and monitoring.

We chose the term fine-grained services, instead of microservices, to avoid focusing on size and emphasize separation of concerns and the single-responsibility principle. Since then, the ubiquity of the term microservices has made us adopt it as well—even though we often find it to be misleading.

The reasons for going with a fine-grained services architecture are not unique to Upwork, but they are worth repeating here.

Assuming that service boundaries have been properly defined to correspond with business subdomains that can operate independently, and making sure that a number of best practices in microservice design are followed (example), then this architectural style can help with:

• Complexity: Services can better enforce a separation of concerns.
• Scalability: Services can scale up or down independently.
• Resilience: Services can fail independently.
• Agility: Services can be developed, tested and deployed independently.

 

Design patterns and constraints

The core of our Agora stack is built around

• Dropwizard, an http-based services container that integrates a collection of best-of-class components to make it easy for engineers to do the right thing.
• A selection of libraries from the Netflix Open-source stack, including Eureka for service discovery, Hystrix for fault isolation, and Archaius for dynamic configuration.

As part of Agora, we adopted the following fundamental patterns and constraints to help us become more efficient and on track as we try to avoid past mistakes.

1. Components as services (vs monolithic system)
Establishing and respecting clear component boundaries is an architectural imperative as system complexity grows. HTTP-based services and service contracts (see below) constitute clear, bright lines that support the separation of logical subsystems and help engineers maintain and evolve these boundaries consciously. Furthermore building services as executable JARs with an embedded jetty server has allowed us to deploy them independently as a simple Unix process and leverage all of the existing Unix process management tools to control it, inspect resource utilization etc.

2. REST (vs tangled interfaces)
We found the REST style to be very helpful as a set of guidelines for our design of service interfaces. Though we have not been able to fully support REST (e.g., the HATEOAS principle still eludes us), we believe we have managed to go a long way toward well-designed service interfaces

3. Thrift (vs absence of service contracts)
Thrift is an interface description language that makes it easy to build typed service contracts, with native code support in multiple languages. Furthermore it helps with documenting service contracts and allows them to evolve with backwards compatibility as a first-class concern. Thrift was our only option in that regard, since alternatives such as Protobuf or Avro would not support our PHP and Perl environments.

4. Fault isolation (vs absence of resilience patterns)
Coding defensively against failures is necessary for the stability of a distributed system. What is equally important is to establish a common vocabulary and a common set of design patterns so fault isolation practices are consistent across the organization. Michael T. Nygard’s Release It! documented a collection of fault isolation patterns (e.g., circuit-breakers, bulkheads) and Hystrix by Netflix delivers a brilliant implementation. We are proud to have given back to the community phystrix, our own PHP implementation of some of Hystrix’s capabilities.

5. Rich metric instrumentation (vs absent/ad-hoc instrumentation)
Visibility into the workings of a complex distributed system needs to be baked in. Agora provides standardized and detailed metric instrumentation through the complete request lifecycle and also supports request tracing across the dependency tree using zipkin.

6. Dynamic service discovery (vs static configuration)
Dynamic service discovery built around Netflix Eureka allows us to adapt quickly to changes in the runtime environment as new services come online, if others fail or are terminated, and as engineers load-balance traffic between service instances during deployments.

 

Moving toward continuous delivery

As part of the modernization process, we decided to adopt best practices for our delivery pipeline and move toward continuous delivery. To support this, we decided to shift to a DevOps culture where development teams would be fully empowered to build, test, deploy, and operate their applications using automated tooling.

The Agora architecture of individually deployable services fits nicely with this shift. We have built a toolchain that enables engineering teams to release multiple times a day without any dependency on TechOps. This deployment workflow system allows engineers to

• Select which service artifact to deploy
• Select and provision a target cluster configuration
• Load-balance traffic to the new cluster using custom or standard deployment patterns (e.g., blue/green, canary). This also means that when things go wrong, a deployment can be rolled back quickly minimizing risk and downtime.

Each service can evolve independently as long as its owners ensure backwards compatibility—something Thrift facilitates programmatically. As multiple service versions can coexist, our engineering needed a clear and succinct vocabulary to deal with software versioning. We’ve found Semantic Versioning to be a simple and pragmatic solution.

We still have a significant way to go toward achieving our continuous delivery goal. Some of our teams have already fully automated their integration and delivery pipelines, but most still require manual approval during the deployment process.

There are gaps in two areas that are important to continuous delivery.

First, we need testing strategies that will provide confidence that a service artifact can proceed to the production environment. Testing a large distributed system is hard, and continuous delivery makes this harder since the shared runtime environment is changing constantly. We are seeing promising results with contract testing, which is one of the various microservices testing strategies we’ve considered.

Second, we need automated analysis of environment and service metrics so we can quickly recognize whether a new deployment is successful or not. Automated analysis is still at an early stage. For the time being, our deployment automation checks a few individual metrics, but we plan to move toward combining multiple metrics in order to calculate a comprehensive confidence score.

 

Embracing the cloud

We have been running upwork.com (then odesk.com) from a data center for more than 10 years. We’ve realized that we should not be wasting our precious resources doing the undifferentiated heavy lifting of planning, provisioning, managing, and maintaining data center hardware, software and networking.

We had been monitoring the emergence of Amazon Web Services as it quickly became the biggest infrastructure-as-a-service provider; we had started experimenting with S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) quite a few years ago.

With microservices, DevOps and continuous delivery at the core of our engineering practices, we decided that AWS was the right environment to support our focus on infrastructure automation while giving us redundancy and scalability.

With a limited investment in cloud configuration and management tooling, we have been able to move faster than ever before. Our computing capacity can grow or shrink instantly. A template-based configuration ensures we avoid snowflakes, and enables us to easily rollout configuration upgrades. Whole environments can be made available on-demand to our engineers via self-service tooling.

Our experience with the cloud has not been without glitches, a couple of which have been major. Cloud infrastructure can be volatile and can fail in ways dissimilar to the ones we had learned to expect using a data center. This has resulted in periods of significant instability and a lot of stress for the teams involved.

The important takeaway is that failure is a given and we need to plan and design around it. Detailed monitoring can make all the difference when it comes to separating signal from noise. Resiliency must be baked into our designs and plans.

The principles of Chaos Engineering and tools such as the Netflix Chaos Monkey emphasize the practice of proactively stressing a system in order to understand its limits and build confidence in its expected availability and resiliency. We are not there yet, but we will soon start to adopt some of these approaches.

Cost management is another area where the cloud requires new approaches and processes. We are still learning best practices here, but the basics include the need to:

1. Understand your baseline capacity requirements and make use of EC2 instance reservations.
2. Tag resources systematically so engineering owners can be kept informed of their expenditure and are able to manage their budget properly. With ownership comes accountability!
3. Automatically monitor your environment for unused resources.

 

The modernization journey and next steps

Modernization is not a project but a process—and we have already identified opportunities to improve our tools and processes as we move forward.

The most immediate among them is the move to Docker, which will happen in early 2017. Docker containers will give us two concrete benefits:

1. Unification of the deployment pipeline across environments as well as across JVM and non-JVM applications: We are currently managing the deployment of our Symfony/Angular presentation-tier differently from our JVM/Agora middle-tier which results in unnecessary variance, replication of effort, and waste.
2. The ability to deploy each single application/service instance on it’s own host: Container scheduling will allow us to consolidate our computing resources with improved utilization while maintaining isolation between service instances.

Modernization has been a unique experience for the engineering teams, who get to rethink and rebuild our technology stack as well as our engineering processes while supporting the millions of clients and freelancers who rely on us.

The post Upwork Modernization: An Overview appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2kKF7f5

The 20 Fastest-growing Skills in the Online Job Market

Quick overview: The popularity of products using intelligent, voice-activated assistants—like Apple’s Siri, Amazon Echo, and Google Home—has surged (and so has demand for engineers who can program computers to understand human speech).

Natural language processing topped the list of the 20 fastest-growing skills online, according to the Upwork Skills Index for Q4 2016.

“Only about 400 freelancers currently list the skill on their Upwork profile, and the fourth quarter was the first time that there was a significant pool of freelancers with this talent,” Bloomberg’s Shelly Hagan explained. “The nascent boom in these jobs also foreshadows the employment that advances in artificial intelligence could create, even while they replace other human tasks.”

What other skills are seeing new or continued growth? See the full list in the infographic below, or read our more detailed analysis >>

(Click image for larger version.)

 

The post The 20 Fastest-growing Skills in the Online Job Market appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2kymU0d

Using Copywriters to Enhance Your Brand

Good writing can inspire an emotional response that enhances engagement with your audience. Finding the right words to move and inspire your potential customers, however, isn’t always easy. Many businesses bring in skilled copywriters to create the compelling prose that helps sell their brand and products.

From ads and customer success stories to website copy and email marketing, copywriters can help you optimize and tune your message for maximum impact. If you’re thinking of hiring a copywriter to boost your brand, these articles from Upwork’s Hiring Headquarters can help you find a freelancer to make your business shine.

Set a reasonable budget

Budget is always an important consideration when you’re planning to contract with a freelance copywriter.

“How Much Should I Pay a Copywriter?” outlines the main factors that can affect how much a copywriter will charge, explaining how they can impact both your budget and the project itself. These can include:

• Research required for the project
• Specialization
• Planning and strategy that may be needed
• The type of project
• The project timeline
• Additional skills needed
• Their level of expertise

The article includes detailed information about each of these considerations, with tips for working with copywriters and staying on budget. It also provides average rate ranges charged by copywriters for a variety of copywriting-related projects.

Craft a winning project description

Once your budget is set, you’ll want to attract the right freelancers to your project. Understanding the ins-and-outs of what copywriters do, and what you’ll want to see in a proposal, can make the task of writing an effective project description much easier.

Of course, mastering the description writing process itself can be difficult without guidance. “Creating the Ideal Copywriter Job Description” provides a detailed breakdown of everything you need to know to write a targeted project description to attract skilled copywriters.

It explores the many types of projects freelance copywriters excel at and offers tips on what to look for when considering interested freelancers so you can select the freelancer who’s the best fit for your project.

It also provides a sample project description you can use as a foundation for writing your own.

Find the best copywriter for your project

If you’re new to working with freelancers or haven’t engaged a copywriter before, it’s helpful to learn how you can identify top proposals with ease.

“How to Hire a Copywriter” offers a concise overview of several common types of copywriters, with a review of their distinct areas of focus to help you court the right expert for the job.

Once you have a number of proposals to consider, the article prescribes a four-step process to help you whittle the list to the best for you to pick from.

1. Start narrowing your list by screening the proposals
2. Schedule a brief video interview with each freelancer on your remaining list
3. Focusing your list even further based on the interviews, put the skills of the remaining freelancers to the test with a small paid project.
4. Evaluate the results to see which freelancer best suits your primary project.

In the full article, you’ll find tips for each step of the process—including tips to help you with the video interview process.

To learn more about copywriting and content marketing, check out the marketing section of the Hiring Headquarters >>

The post Using Copywriters to Enhance Your Brand appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2kwWkED

Keep Your To-do List In Order With These Tips from Upwork Freelancers

There is no “one size fits all” method of organizing goals and to-do lists, but there is one that will work the best for you—you just have to find it. From the traditional to the modern, freelancers from Upwork’s Facebook community recently shared how they keep their goals and to-do’s organized to ensure nothing gets missed.

---

“Early in the morning when I reach my desk, I jot down all the important tasks to be done during the day and then give them a priority. I start with the most important task, finish it, then take on the next one. That is how I commit my time most judiciously and make it more productive. By the end of day, I finish most of my important tasks.”
— Abdul Sattar

“A to-do list should be written and not just in the mind. Work from top to least priority, or hardest to easiest task.”
— Bai Tender Sinsuat

“I have a diary. Every day I list the points to be attended to the next day. Then, before I go to sleep, I will tick mark those that are done and cross the ones that are not. When listing things for next day, I may include the previous day’s crossed ones if they’re priority. This takes just 5 minutes a day. It may be traditional but it works.”
— Abhinand Vnair

“I use the Daily To-Do-List software to keep me organized. I have been using it for more than 6 years now. I can schedule tasks in advance, set reminders and even print out a task list based on a certain date range. I also don’t miss out on repeating tasks as the software allows me to schedule recurring tasks based on frequency (i.e., daily, weekly, every nth day of the month, etc.). As a freelancer, we may accept multiple contracts. The app allows me to group tasks per client. This app is indeed helping me to stay organized despite a super busy work schedule. I definitely prefer this app over manual jotting down of tasks or putting a task list on spreadsheets.“
— Weng Ramos-Castro

“I use Todoist and Evernote. I list down the most important task down to the least.”
— Jovy Lizaso Pulumbarit

“I always apply the GTD [Getting Things Done] method with my personal and professional commitments.”
— Harold Jacob

---

How do you keep your goals and to-do list organized? Tell us in the comments! And be sure to check out Inside Upwork: Productivity Tips from Upwork HQ for more great ideas.

Editor’s note: Responses edited for grammar, spelling, and clarity. The statements above are those of their authors and do not constitute the views or opinions of Upwork.

The post Keep Your To-do List In Order With These Tips from Upwork Freelancers appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2j0tKPP

Upwork Newswire: Three Traits to Look for in Your Next Engineering Hire

This biweekly column features the latest freelancing trends and Upwork’s role within them.

Medium | Three Traits I Look for in Software Hires That Have Never Failed Me

Through positions at both tech startups and giants, including eBay and Netflix, Upwork’s SVP of engineering, Han Yuan, has hired countless engineers. In a recent post on Medium, Yuan shared the three characteristics he’s learned to screen for.

Self-awareness

Yuan says it’s important that an engineer is able to recognize both their strengths and weaknesses. “Overconfidence can lead to production problems when team members optimistically underestimate timelines,” he said. “Underconfident employees may not work up to their potential.”

Evidence of deliberate practice

Knowing what they need to improve, Yuan looks for people who then take purposeful steps to learn. “Deliberate practice requires both time and tweaking: you’ve got to put in the hours, and you also need to constantly evaluate and adjust your practice to get better,” Yuan explained.

Grit

Yuan says he wraps up interviews with a test—one that’s “either impossible to complete in the time allotted or requiring the candidate to seek help.” It’s a test, he says, that simulates real work and the challenges that come up.

Learn more about these qualities and why they matter in Yuan’s full post >>

The post Upwork Newswire: Three Traits to Look for in Your Next Engineering Hire appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2jTqSUx

118-150 Robson by Amacon – Plans, Prices, Availability

At a Glance

• prime location at Robson & Cambie streets
• 30-storey mixed-use building
• 125 studio to 3-bedroom condos
• hotel with restaurant & lounge
• 1 block from BC Place Stadium
• 1 block from Vancouver Public Library
• goal of LEED Gold

Where Downtown Meets Yaletown
Canadian developer, Amacon, has proposed to redevelop the site of the Northern Electric Company Building at 118-150 Robson Street into a mixed-use building containing a 120-room hotel, 4,635 sq ft of commercial space, and a residential tower with 125 condominiums. The Art Moderne façade of the heritage building will be restored and re-purposed into retail shops and a hotel, above which a new luxury residential tower will be constructed.

Be A Presale Condo VIP!

Find Out About New Presales & Get Access to VIP Openings & Special Promotions!

• First/Last Name *
• E-mail *
• Phone
• *
  Select A Region * Vancouver Downtown Vancouver East Side Vancouver West Side Vancouver South North Shore Burnaby/New West Coquitlam/Tri Cities Richmond Langley/Surrey
• I Am Interested In *
  New Vancouver Presale Condos Buying a Condo Selling my Condo
• Realtor Status *
  I already have a Realtor I don't have a Realtor yet I am a Realtor
• Comment/Notes
• Page Label
• Type
• Receipent
• Should be Empty:

Located where Downtown Vancouver transitions into the residential neighbourhoods surrounding the north shore of False Creek, you’ll have within mere steps of your front door an exceptional range of eateries, shops, professional services, and leisure activities for unparalleled convenience. Revel in the nightlife of Granville Street or cheer on the home team at a BC Lions game in BC Place. Survey the brand name boutiques along Robson Street or enjoy a fine dining experience in one of Yaletown’s eclectic restaurants. Living more is driving less.

Pricing for 118-150 Robson
As this project is in the development application stage, pricing has not yet been finalized. To ensure you are kept up-to-date on this excellent purchase opportunity, we strongly recommend signing up to our VIP list above.

Floor Plans for 118-150 Robson
Current plans envision 125 residential suites, ranging from studios to 3-bedrooms, making this property suitable for families.

Amenities at 118-150 Robson
Residents will enjoy shared use of a fifth floor indoor amenity room and an outdoor area to enjoy fine summer days with family and friends. Have out-of-town guests visiting? What’s more convenient than staying at the attached 120-room hotel and have use of its amenities? So many more conveniences are located just outside your door.

Parking and Storage
Approximately 280 underground parking and 250 bicycle stalls have been proposed for residents, hotel guests, and retail customers. Of these, 56 will be electric vehicle charging stations.

Maintenance Fees at 118-150 Robson
Will be included with release of pricing information.

Developer Team for 118-150 Robson
Amacon, developer of prestigious properties such as Modern on Burrard Street, has partnered with GBL Architects to redevelop the former Downtown Vancouver Catholic Archdiocese property. For over four decades, Amacon has been one of the most influential real estate development and construction firms in Canada. With a spectacular portfolio of landmark developments in Vancouver and Toronto, Amacon has established a highly-regarded reputation for setting the standard in the development industry.

Amacon is driven by passion to design with architectural innovation; a commitment to constructing uncompromising standards of quality and superior craftsmanship; and offering responsive customer care and proven satisfaction. These are the building blocks that define Amacon’s signature developments and new communities.

GBL Architects is a comprehensive, energetic, and diverse firm of architects providing a full range of architectural services to the private and public sectors. The firm has built its reputation on high quality design, tight project management, technical proficiency, financial responsibility, and keen administrative skills.

Each project design is based upon our knowledge of traditional and innovative construction techniques, materials and methods, and our familiarity with the appropriate local codes and approval processes. The considerable number of projects successfully realized by GBL have helped to shape the form and development of communities and neighbourhoods throughout British Columbia.

Expected Completion for 118-150 Robson
TBA.

Are you interested in learning more about other homes in Yaletown, Southeast False Creek, or Chinatown?

Check out these great Yaletown Presales!

The post 118-150 Robson by Amacon – Plans, Prices, Availability appeared first on Mike Stewart Real Estate Specialist 604-763-3136.

from Blog – Mike Stewart Real Estate Specialist 604-763-3136 http://ift.tt/2jecZMR

An Intro to Software Testing—and Why You Shouldn’t Skip It

Every piece of software starts with a purpose. Countless hours later, how can you feel confident you’ve succeeded? By testing your software.

With tight budgets and pressure to ship quickly, some people see testing as a lot of extra: Extra time, extra money, extra resources to make it happen.

Skipping this step, however, leaves you with a blind spot. Even the most careful coder can make mistakes or overlook an angle. What if eager users find something your team missed? What if other people’s code or APIs don’t work the way they should?

These articles from the Hiring Headquarters—Upwork’s resource for businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs—make the case for one part of the development process many people love to hate.

What is software testing?

Software testing isn’t just about throwing random tasks at a program to see what happens. Its main purpose is to verify and validate that the software delivers the results it’s supposed to.

“The cost and effort associated with testing are excellent investments—and can ensure stability and reduce overall costs from buggy, poorly executed software,” Carey Wodehouse explained in “An Intro to Software Testing.”

Highlighting the advantages of making room for testing, Wodehouse explains:

• Manual versus automated testing
• The software testing cycle
• Unit testing
• Performance and stability testing

You’ll also get an overview of what QA testers can cost.

Different types of testing

Software testing can be manual or automated—and sometimes both. “Manual Testing vs. Automated Software Testing” explains the pros and cons of each approach.

One benefit of manual testing, for example, is the advantage of real-world feedback—the same sort of feedback you’ll get from users: “A manual tester can compare expectations for how the app should run with outcomes, then provide feedback on what didn’t work. They’ll also be able to weigh in on the visuals—something computers can’t do.”

Automated testing, however, is very thorough and isn’t open to getting testing fatigue—what happens when someone gets too familiar with your software to keep a fresh perspective. It’s also reusable—once you’ve set everything up—and gives your team a chance to take a break.

Testing with a distributed team

Neither type of testing is perfect, which is why many teams use both—including the engineering team at Upwork.

“Ways to Optimize Software Testing with a Distributed Team” describes how Upwork’s agile, distributed team uses different types of testing at different parts of the process.

The team relies most heavily on automated testing, which “makes us able to complete a full suite of unit testing in one hour, and a full suite of parallelized functional tests in about six hours.” But they also do regular QA, distributing test engineers across multiple teams.

“Traditionally, developers would write code, throw it over the fence, and expect QA to find the bugs. Now, developers own the quality of their code and test engineers are there to build the test automation that allows us to release more frequently with fewer production issues.”

To learn more, read “What Can a Quality Assurance (QA) Team Do For You?” Or check out the other resources you’ll find in the Hiring Headquarters.

The post An Intro to Software Testing—and Why You Shouldn’t Skip It appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2jBHSON

Inside Upwork: Productivity Tips from Upwork HQ

One thing we all have in common, no matter what our background or area of specialty, is the desire to make the most of our time. Whether it’s to create more leisure time, or to get more work done, these tips from Upwork employees can help you get things under control.

---

“A colleague introduced me to the idea of timeboxing—to allocate a preplanned amount of time to each task that you’re working on and to hold yourself accountable to finishing the task within that allocated time period. It sounds like a very simple concept, but it can be easy to spend extraneous time on a task by continually revising and fine-tuning it. By giving myself a specific amount of time to get something done and to do it well, I’m much more focused and efficient with my work.”
– Chandhini Balakrishnan, Category Manager

“Extend your day. It doesn’t work for everyone, but I like to get up early. This allows me to go to the gym, spend time with my family, and still get my work day started in the early morning.”
– Garnor Morantes, Director of Community

“Batch process everything. Plug in, tune out, and don’t get distracted by things. Every distraction or switching of focus requires an average of 20 minutes to recover from. It takes 20 minutes to get back into what you were doing. The longer you go doing deep processing, the more you get done.”
– Alvin Ding, Marketing Manager

“I live by the 80-20 rule because no one will care about how much or how hard you work if the work you do has little impact. 20% of everything you do should have 80% impact.”
– Linda Lo, Freelancer Marketing Program Manager

“When I’m working in the office and I have a big project due, I keep my headphones in and when someone comes up and tries to talk to me, I act like I’m on a phone call. It works every time! “
– Lillian Travis, Enterprise Managed Services

“I wake up (almost) every morning to watch the sunrise (sometimes with a cup of coffee, but most of the time not). I reflect upon what I’m thankful for and what I need to get done for the day. Believe it or not, though it may seem counterintuitive, committing to a time each day to reflect, I believe, is among the most important things one can do. Mine happens to be first thing in the morning.”
– Cecil J. Puvathingal, Director of Sales Development

Hungry for more great tips? Check out the Hiring Headquarters, the ultimate resource for entrepreneurs, executives, and freelancers. We’re adding new content weekly to help you run your business in the most effective and efficient way possible.

The post Inside Upwork: Productivity Tips from Upwork HQ appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2jKidk2

December 2016 Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver Real Estate Statistics Package with Charts & Graphs

December 2016 rebgv statistics package mike stewart vancouver realtor from Mike Stewart

A heated year for Metro Vancouver real estate draws to a close

The Metro Vancouver housing market had its third highest selling year on record in 2016, behind only 2015 and 2005.

Sales of detached, attached and apartment properties in the region reached 39,943 in 2016, a 5.6 per cent decrease from the 42,326 sales recorded in 2015, and a 20.6 per cent increase over the 33,116 residential sales in 2014.

“It was an eventful year for real estate in Metro Vancouver. Escalating prices caused by low supply and strong home buyer demand brought more attention to the market than ever before,” Dan Morrison, Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) president said.

“As prices rose in the first half of the year, public debate waged about what was fuelling demand and what should be done to stop it. This led to multiple government interventions into the market. The long-term effects of these actions won’t be fully understood for some time.”

Residential properties listed for sale on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in Metro Vancouver reached 57,596 in 2016. This is an increase of 0.6 per cent compared to the 57,249 properties listed in 2015 and a 2.6 per cent increase compared to the 56,066 properties listed in 2014.

“The supply of homes for sale couldn’t keep up with home buyer demand for much of 2016. This allowed home sellers to raise their asking price. It wasn’t until the last half of the year that prices began to show modest declines.”

The MLS® Home Price Index (HPI) composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver ends the year at $897,600. This represents a 2.2 per cent decrease over the past six months and a 17.8 per cent increase compared to December 2015.

December summary

Residential property sales in the region totalled 1,714 in December 2016, a decrease of 39.4 per cent from the 2,827 sales recorded in December 2015 and a decrease of 22.6 per cent compared to November 2016 when 2,214 homes sold.

Last month’s sales were 8.1 per cent below the 10-year sales average for the month.

New listings for detached, attached and apartment properties in Metro Vancouver totalled 1,312 in December 2016. This represents a decrease of 35.1 per cent compared to the 2,021 units listed in December 2015 and a 58.3 per cent decrease compared to November 2016 when 3,147 properties were listed.

The total number of properties currently listed for sale on the MLS® in Metro Vancouver is 6,345, a 5.3 per cent increase compared to December 2015 (6,024) and a 24.3 per cent decrease compared to November 2016 (8,385).

Sales of detached properties in December 2016 reached 541, a decrease of 52.4 per cent from the 1,136 detached sales recorded in December 2015. The benchmark price for detached properties is $1,483,500. This represents an 18.6 per cent increase compared to December 2015 and a 1.8 per cent decrease compared to November 2016.

Sales of apartment properties reached 915 in December 2016, a decrease of 25.3 per cent compared to the 1,225 sales in December 2015.The benchmark price of an apartment property is $510,300. This represents a 17.3 per cent increase compared to December 2015 and a 0.3 per cent decrease compared to November 2016.

Attached property sales in December 2016 totalled 258, a decrease of 44.6 per cent compared to the 466 sales in December 2015. The benchmark price of an attached unit is $661,800. This represents a 20.4 per cent increase compared to December 2015 and a 0.8 per cent decrease compared to November 2016.

The post December 2016 Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver Real Estate Statistics Package with Charts & Graphs appeared first on Mike Stewart Real Estate Specialist 604-763-3136.

from Blog – Mike Stewart Real Estate Specialist 604-763-3136 http://ift.tt/2jtGFsy

Washington State Post and Beam Log Home Shell for Sale

Artisan Log and Timber Homes has an amazing opportunity for you to own your dream post and beam log home at a significantly discounted price.

This Western Red Cedar Post and Beam log home shell is currently under construction at our log yard, but with only 75% of the work complete, there is still time to customize the interior wall layouts if desired to make this home your own. This home is being built with large and beautiful Western Red Cedar logs that are featured throughout the home including two large trusses.

Since our clients in Washington State were not able to obtain a building permit due to water issues on their property we are offering up this post and beam log home for sale with a significant discount.

We would like to find a home for this log package so if you or someone you know if interested please email or contact us.

Details

• Species of timber: premium Western Red Cedar post and beams
• Log size: minimum of 16″ diameter and up to 30″ flared butts
• 2 level rancher (with optional basement)
• Sq. ft: main floor, 2,493 square feet; garage, 676 square feet; loft 1,505 square feet
• Bedrooms: 3 plus 2 offices which could be bedrooms
• Bathrooms: 4
• Two entrances
• Large mud and laundry room
• TV room
• Two car attached garage

View floor plans here.

from Artisan Custom Log Homes http://ift.tt/2jc79OW

Expanding Your Business With an iOS App

Smartphones have become one of the best ways for brands to engage with a target audience. Building a companion iOS app for your business, or structuring an entire business around creating apps for Apple’s marketplace, can be a powerful way to connect with clients and customers globally.

Whether you aim to create a killer app for your company or start a new app-driven enterprise, these articles from the Hiring Headquarters—Upwork’s resource for businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs—will help you get started.

Hiring iOS developers

Coming up with ideas for an iOS app that can enhance your business and reach your market can be easy—at least for some people—but turning those ideas into fully functioning and well-designed apps takes expertise. If you’re not code savvy, or lack the spare time to dig into the development yourself, engaging an app developer with the right skills to help bring your project to fruition is worth the expense.

“How Much Does It Cost to Hire an iOS Developer?” breaks down the typical rates charged by highly rated iOS developers on Upwork, from basic “get the job done well” skills to advanced experts who can offer additional perks for a more premium price. It’s an excellent reference to help you ballpark your budget, and includes additional insights to help you get the most for your money.

Beyond the financial cost of engaging a developer, the article also explores tips to help you define the boundaries and needs of your project and breaks down the elements that iOS app development most commonly entails.

Go native or cross-platform?

There can be perks to creating a native iOS app—an app designed and coded specifically to run on Apple phones and tablets. But the benefits of exclusivity can sometimes be outweighed by the need for enhanced connectivity and reaching a broader mobile market outside of typical Apple device users.

Deciding between going native or using cross-platform software to create your iOS app can be a significant factor to mull over as you begin planning out the development cycle.

“Native vs. Xamarin: Which Type of Mobile App Should You Develop?” explores reasons why you might develop a native app as well as common challenges that can come from taking a cross-platform approach. It then takes a closer look at Xamarin, cross-platform software that lets you create native apps for different devices and storefronts while offering platform-specific user interfaces.

Here are three of the perks of using Xamarin highlighted in the article:

• A shared code base simplifies development. Using one C# codebase for multiple platforms cuts down on the time and expense you could spend developing multiple versions of your app for each platform natively.
• Apps update easily. Updating your app across multiple storefronts can be much faster when you have everything in one place.
• Native performance. With access to device application programming interfaces (APIs), Xamarin enables you to build an app that connects directly to native functionality.

Tapping into the power of analytics

For any mobile developer, getting real-world feedback and data from app users is crucial when it comes to fine-tuning and improving the experience.

App owners can put analytics to work in exciting ways, too, by integrating them right into their apps. The information and insights you gather can be invaluable for making business decisions and plans.

“An Intro to Mobile App Analytics” demystifies what analytics is and what it can do for your business, from enhancing your marketing efforts to helping you improve the efficiency of your operations.

In addition to exploring how to structure questions to get the right info from users, the article looks at ways collect and organize analytics data from your apps. It also provides a comparison of common analytics tools and services so that you can familiarize yourself with different resources available.

Learn more about mobile app development on the Hiring Headquarters >>

The post Expanding Your Business With an iOS App appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2jHRZSw

How to Land Your First Job on Upwork: Top Tips from a Seasoned Freelancer

In an article originally published on the Ukrainian site AIN.UA, Liubomyr K.—one of the top freelancers on Upwork, with a portfolio that includes over 50 successfully completed projects and over 2,000 hours worked—shared a few tips for newbies to help them kickstart their business and land their first contract.

1. Eliminate all distractions

There’s no room for laziness or inactivity when it comes to freelancing. Today it’s hard for people to concentrate on work and keep away from social networks, Internet surfing, and other distractions. That’s why overcoming laziness and distractions alone could boost your productivity by about 50 percent.

2. Be patient

You’re full of determination and drive, but your proposals aren’t getting a response. Don’t think of it as something bad; be patient. You may need a day to get your first response or three weeks; you never know. Based on personal experience, the probability of getting a response is around five percent on average. I got my first contract within a week, the second within two weeks. And only then it became much easier. Now it takes me only a few days to get a contract.

If the client isn’t responsive, then perhaps you’re doing something wrong. With the next few tips, let’s see how you can improve things.

3. Make your profile shine

When creating your Upwork profile, take time to describe your skills, situations in which you may be useful to the client, and your relevant experience, if any. Be concise and avoid long and pointless wording, otherwise the client might get bored reading it.

Ideally, write 3-4 paragraphs in the Overview section of your Upwork profile and try to stick to around 1,000 characters.

4. Test your knowledge

Upwork has a plethora of tests, many of which are relevant to your specialty. Take as many relevant tests as possible to confirm the level of your skills. So far, I’ve taken eight tests and am going to take another 2-3 in the near future.

While not all clients may consider skills test results, for some clients, such evaluations really matter.

5. Make sure your portfolio isn’t empty

Creating a portfolio won’t be a problem for seasoned professionals, but it may be one for people who are new to both freelancing and IT in general. Don’t have enough work for a portfolio? Start a blog, work on your own website, or contribute to forums to show clients that you’re a thought leader in topics that interest you. With time, you’ll be able to replace sample projects in your portfolio with actual ones, but to start, it’s better than nothing.

If you do have a lot of work to show, don’t show it altogether. Instead, select 4-5 of your best samples. The point is to demonstrate that you’re capable of doing the work and show the client the quality of your code, design, or whatever you specialize in.

6. Try to avoid looking unprofessional

Choose a decent photo for your profile. Don’t use a photo from your family reunion with you and all your relatives, or a photo from a recent beach trip with you in a swimsuit. Use a plain and professional photo. Make sure your face is clearly visible and you’re smiling.

7. Carefully read the job description

…And be sure to read all of it. You’ll need to read it thoroughly to:

• Understand whether the job is of interest to you.
• Make sure the project is a good fit with your skills and experience.
• Prepare your proposal properly—it’s the first communication between you and the client in which you try to sell your services.

8. Prepare your proposal wisely

The proposal you submit is one of the three most important things a client will look closely at when deciding whether to hire you or not. The other two are your profile and reputation on Upwork. If you don’t have a reputation yet, the other two must be strong.

Avoid using templates—always write unique content. It should be obvious that your proposal is written specifically for them and addresses details they mentioned in their work description. And remember, your proposal has to be short and to the point. I usually make mine around 300 characters.

9. Don’t set your rate too low

Approaches like “will work for feedback” are against the rules on Upwork and won’t reflect well on you. Know your value and be confident during negotiations. If the client asks for a discount the first time they hire you, consider it. You can offer to complete a paid test task or offer a discount of 20 percent, for example. But it should be more of an exception or a compromise.

10. Don’t give up

Keep in mind that all your efforts will pay off in spades. So be optimistic and feel that your skills are needed and important. Don’t give up halfway and you’ll make it. And when you’re in new and uncertain scenarios, keep calm; you can do it. Good luck!

This story was submitted by freelancer Liubomyr K. and does not constitute the views or opinions of Upwork.

 

The post How to Land Your First Job on Upwork: Top Tips from a Seasoned Freelancer appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2jiPUZY

Time Management Techniques for Busy Freelancers

Juggling several clients at the same time while delivering quality work is a skill that involves careful planning and execution. If the thought of delivering quality work to an increasing number of different clients seems daunting, don’t worry! Take a deep breath and have a look at these time management tips from the Upwork Facebook community.

---

“As someone who spends her entire workday at a computer, I find having a simple notebook to handwrite my day down in keeps me the most focused. Not only is it a visual representation of my day, but I tend to remember everything on my plate better when there’s a hand-to-paper connection. I know a lot of people who use Google Calendar (or something similar) but nothing I’ve found beats this simple tool for staying on task.”

– Carissa Andrews

---

“Yes indeed, [Carissa]! Speaking from my own experience: Writing with a pen is much slower than the keyboard, but it actually gives us time to process the information and think of the things we are putting into our notes. Unlike the online organizing tools where you can just copy and paste… then you turn your head to find your ‘organization’ is just a bunch of endless to-dos. A good old agenda and some lovely markers, and there we go—that’s my case!”

– Jeca Novakovic

---

“I base the amount of time with each client on the priority of the project. If there is a deadline for one project, then I calculate approximately how many hours I will need to invest in that project each day to complete it on time, and factor this into my daily schedule. The more projects I’m working on at a time, the more necessary it becomes to maintain a detailed and specific schedule each week.

“I use Google Calendar to create the schedule. I also use a color-coded spreadsheet to keep track of all of my past and present clients and the details of the projects I completed for them. I color code them based on whether they are past, temporarily inactive, or active projects/clients. This helps a lot when I’m contacted by a former client for a new project, because I can look them up and be prepared for their new project needs.”

– Johnna Russell

---

“I usually juggle 5-6 projects at a time. I have made a spreadsheet in which I block my working hours per day. I have a realistic daily target (usually not more than 6 hours)… I’ve set up the spreadsheet so it shows the percentage my workweek completed and the number of [estimated] hours remaining per client.

“Every day I set 30 minutes to do ‘small things first’ such as e-mails and making a to-do list, sometimes submitting proposals. This is time I can’t book [for a client]. I divide the to-do list in ‘Today’ and ‘Tomorrow’ to keep it from getting messy. The to-do list is flexible, and I change the priority [of tasks] daily based on client requests. I plan free time too.

“If an incoming email involves less than 3 minutes work, I usually answer right away. I write down bigger questions in my to-do list, then send a confirmation of the new task to my client. Works like a charm.”

– Paul Kersbergen

---

“The key to juggling multiple projects is to set realistic deadlines for each individual project before committing to it with the client. The quality of the work should not suffer because of the juggling.”

– Varun Sahani

 

What do you do to manage your time when balancing multiple clients? Tell us in the comments!

Editor’s note: Responses edited for grammar, spelling, and clarity. The statements above are those of their authors and do not constitute the views or opinions of Upwork.

The post Time Management Techniques for Busy Freelancers appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2i9dxY7

Upwork Newswire: What Clients Should Know About the Freelance Life

This biweekly column features the latest freelancing trends and Upwork’s role within them.

The contingent workforce offers a lot of benefits for companies, not least of which is ready access to top talent when you need it. By 2020, a report by Intuit estimated 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will be comprised of freelancers—many of whom made the move to self-employment attracted by factors like the flexibility and opportunity it offers.

But freelance workers also have unique concerns you should be aware of when partnering with them—not just so you can avoid legal headaches and confusion but also so you can build a stronger relationship by understanding where they’re coming from.

In “How to make it in the gig economy,” reporter Alessandra Malito breaks down some of the realities for these skilled sole proprietors. As business owners, they’re responsible for their own health benefits, while wages can vary and be unpredictable. Managing income, establishing a solid network, and financial planning are consistently top of mind.

Learn more by reading the full article from Market Watch >>

The post Upwork Newswire: What Clients Should Know About the Freelance Life appeared first on Upwork Blog.

from Upwork Blog http://ift.tt/2iwgq10