I believe true education must evolve from self-discovery, meaning to say one has to understand and believe his/her purpose in here and what he or she does benefits the good of the society. It is only possible by believing in oneself’s ability and purpose that he or she will be inspired and motivated to learn and experience without losing faith. Rewards and results should have the least priority in education because in all honesty they usually attract the wrong motivations later in life.

Don’t hate the video, learn to understand it from another perspective and perhaps it will change your life, for the better.

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MIUI is a heavily modified UI firmware for Android OS created by Xiaomi. While I always love the open-sourced Android OS, their interface and touch sensitivity has never impressed me. Even when I compared my iPhone 4S to HTC One(supposedly more powerful) side by side, I’m puzzled why HTC phone cannot even follow my finger scroll through photos or the browser as quickly as iPhone. I’m not clear whether it is still a hardware or software issue but I’m more inclined to think it’s the latter.

So when I first saw version 5 of MIUI, I was blown away and wanted to immediately purchase an Android phone. Nope, not just because that it looks like iOS. Sure, it might have taken ideas from iOS but I actually think it looks and functions better. We used to cringe at the awful broken Chinese firmware and UI designs a decade ago but now they turned the tables and are on the rise to become tops in almost everything, even in small details like phone icon designs and wallpapers.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch the video and tell me you are not impressed.

The post iOS 7 vs MIUI v5 appeared first on HOWORKS.

Cloud computing is a term often misunderstood or confused, simply because it isn’t a real technical term. It is coined as a movement but not as an actual technology, the reason is there are many ways cloud can actually exist, the most ambiguous examples are network infrastructure clouds vs actual server clouds. Not going to dive too deep into the technicalities, true cloud solutions actually existed way before the term came about, except we were calling it redundancies.

Think of the simplest of all redundancies as two servers having the same data, so when one goes down the other kicks in without any user intervention. Replace the faulty server and you have the same redundancy again. This kind of solutions existed even in master/slave Windows Active Directory servers a decade ago, it’s not new technology. What cloud does now is simply a software optimization of redundant servers, meaning multiple servers(some folks call them nodes these days) but a single instance of data storage.

Nevertheless, we are fans of cloud solutions and redundancies. Only the true ones e.g. AWS or Linode. But bear in mind true cloud solutions like these don’t come cheap. If you use a cloud service, make sure they explain to you their network and hardware infrastructure to you clearly, chances are if it’s cheap it’s not true cloud.

If you have questions about the ever ambiguous cloud platform, write us a comment or send your question to our Questions section. In a future article, we will recommend some cloud services that you can use to further enhance your data accessibility and reliability.

The post Hosting Redundancies + Cloud Solutions appeared first on HOWORKS.

Envato is the owner of ThemeForest, an online marketplace for website themes including many of which we use for ourselves and our customers. One of the most popular categories is undoubtedly WordPress but we also love the concept of the site, gathering professional theme designers from all over the world to create beautiful work. As you might have notice by now, our very own website is based on one of the themes found in ThemeForest as well.

The reason why we are sharing this is that once you have grasp the concept of installing and using WordPress, you will be amazed by how modular this platform is. You can set it up as a blog, a magazine site, a photography portfolio, online shop, etc. The possibilities are simply endless and the prices are affordable but don’t go buying away now because you won’t know how to deal with the theme files if you have no experience with WordPress at all. We will be running tutorials on what you need to get started so stay tuned.

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2013. This year HOWORKS isn’t the same old. Times have changed and we can’t stay stagnant. The state of web design industry has transformed so much, so much that it has become a lot more exciting. We no longer call ourselves web designers, perhaps a bad alias would be the middleman or agency. But we are different, we see a problem and we want to solve it. The web, however is still a mess; we see failed projects, uncompleted websites, badly designed and pure html static sites, broken links and broken pages.

Believe in our cause, journey with us and share with everyone what works.

The post The State Of Web Design Now… appeared first on HOWORKS.

I love this project. We all know how tough it is for app projects to be funded properly on Kickstarter, honestly I haven’t seen much. Pixel Press game is an interesting twist to the usual gaming styles on our mobile phone or tablet. How it works, from what I have seen through videos and images, is you simply draw the schematics and mechanics of the game level on a piece of paper and then use your phone or tablet to scan that very piece of paper and voila, you have just created your game level on Pixel Press.

Although this idea is fresh and unique, it does face some challenges. Keeping user to draw all the time is a biggie and even creating levels on software can be a hassle, personally games that allow me to create custom levels irks me and made me think the developer is lazy to create a tough level that is possible to beat. The other challenge is it is after all a mobile app, and pricing it at US$6 for only early-birds is pricey as compared to the average price of mobile apps around.

For the record, I have managed to get into the early-bird pledge. The media has been the force behind the support for this kickstarter project and $100k almost feels like a long shot for a mobile app. I’m interested to see how this turns out, it is still after all a great idea especially around kids.

The post Pixel Press Game – Draw Your Own Game appeared first on HOWORKS.