Actionable Gamification. Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards

Yu-kai Chou

Effective gamification is a combination of game design, game dynamics, user experience, and ROI-driving business implementations. This book explores the interplay between these disciplines and captures the core principles that contribute to a good gamification design.The book starts with an overview of the Octalysis Framework and the 8 Core Drives that can be used to build strategies around the various systems that make games engaging. As the book progresses, each chapter delves deep into a Core Drive, explaining its design and how it should be used. Finally, to apply all the concepts and techniques that you learn throughout, the book contains a brief showcase of using the Octalysis Framework to design a project experience from scratch.After reading this book, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to enable the widespread adoption of good gamification and human-focused design in all types of industries.

Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin. Master the skills required to steer cross-platform applications from drawing board to app store(s) using Xamarin

Can Bilgin, Miljenko Cvjetko, Paulo Ortins, Robert Hellestrae, ...

The main goal of this book is to equip you with the required know-how to successfully analyze, develop, and manage Xamarin cross-platform projects using the most efficient, robust, and scalable implementation patterns.This book starts with general topics such as memory management, asynchronous programming, local storage, and networking, and later moves onto platform-specific features. During this transition, you will learn about key tools to leverage the patterns described, as well as advanced implementation strategies and features. The book also presents User Interface design and implementation concepts on Android and iOS platforms from a Xamarin and cross-platform perspective, with the goal to create a consistent but native UI experience.Finally, we show you the toolset for application lifecycle management to help you prepare the development pipeline to manage and see cross-platform projects through to public or private release.

iAd Production Beginner's Guide. Create motion-rich, beautiful iAd adverts for iOS devices and incorporate techniques to help boost revenue and brand awareness

Ben Collier

Think of an iAd as a micro-app contained within an app on a user's iPhone or iPad that they've downloaded from the App Store. When the user taps your advert's banner it bursts into life filling the entire screen of their device. iAd Beginner's Guide takes you through the start to finish process of building rich, compelling, interactive iAds. You will learn to create beautiful multi-page ads with store finders, social sharing, 3D images and video galleries.You will create ads that utilize the powerful technologies in the iPhone to make your brand shine. Once you have engaged the user you can carry out targeted advertising campaigns with location-based coupons, store finders and social engagement. Using the iTunes Store you will see how it's even possible to add one-click digital content purchasing right within your ad. Learn how iAd producer manages all the HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 behind your iAd. You will be creating emotive, gripping and effective mobile advertising campaigns in no time.

Drupal 10 Masterclass. Build responsive Drupal applications to deliver custom and extensible digital experiences to users

Adam Bergstein

Learning Drupal can be challenging because of its robust, extensible, and powerful capability for digital experiences, making it difficult for beginners to grasp and use it for application development. If you’re looking to break into Drupal with hands-on knowledge, this Drupal 10 Masterclass is for you.With this book, you’ll gain a thorough knowledge of Drupal by understanding its core concepts, including its technical architecture, frontend, backend, framework, and latest features. Equipped with foundational knowledge, you’ll bootstrap and install your first project with expert guidance on maintaining Drupal applications. Progressively, you’ll build applications using Drupal’s core features such as content structures, multilingual support, users, roles, Views, search, and digital assets. You’ll discover techniques for developing modules and themes and harness Drupal’s robust content management through layout builder, blocks, and content workflows. The book familiarizes you with prominent tools such as Git, Drush, and Composer for code deployments and DevOps practices for Drupal application management. You’ll also explore advanced use cases for content migration and multisite implementation, extending your application’s capabilities.By the end of this book, you’ll not only have learned how to build a successful Drupal application but may also find yourself contributing to the Drupal community.

Getting Started with Citrix Provisioning Services 7.0. Learning to install, configure, and manage Citrix Provisioning Services is made so much faster and simpler with this practical guide. Making no assumptions of prior knowledge, it takes you step by step through the product features

Puthiyavan Udayakumar

Marketing Automation with Mailchimp. Expert tips, techniques, and best practices for scaling marketing strategies and ROI for your business

Margarita J. Caraballo

Are you looking for an all-in-one comprehensive guide to implementing Mailchimp channels and automation for your business? Then Marketing Automation with Mailchimp can be your go-to guide. You’ll start by learning common terms used in the Mailchimp environment, as well as about account setup and audience management for businesses. After that, you’ll find out how to set up channels, where you’ll actively interact with your contacts and begin to add new ones. Additionally, you’ll gain an understanding of how to set up a consistent marketing presence in the form of emails and websites and the benefits of determining a brand identity.You’ll also explore advanced Mailchimp features to optimize platform utilization using analytics, reporting, A/B and multivariate testing, the customer journey builder, and the Mailchimp e-commerce store. Toward the end, you’ll discover some important shopping, payment, and CRM integrations that can be connected to your Mailchimp platform for custom business needs. With this book, you’ll gain insights into real-world use cases to implement a marketing strategy to extend your existing work.By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to implement Mailchimp marketing automation seamlessly into your business to grow your customer base and revenue.

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification and Beyond. A complete AZ-900 exam guide with online mock exams, flashcards, and hands-on activities - Second Edition

Steve Miles, Peter De Tender

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Certification and Beyond, Second Edition, combines the comprehensive cloud fundamentals book with Packt’s powerful exam training platform, offering a holistic learning experience designed to help you not just ace the AZ-900 exam but also apply that knowledge to excel in your career.Covering essential topics such as cloud computing principles, Azure architecture, services, management, and governance, this guide offers clear explanations and real-world insights to help you build confidence in working with Microsoft Azure. It also includes access to an interactive online training platform, which features practice exams, exam-like timers, interactive flashcards, and detailed explanations to reinforce learning and assess exam readiness.By engaging with the concepts in this book and the accompanying online resources, you will gain a solid foundation in Azure fundamentals, enabling you to approach the AZ-900 certification exam with confidence and take the next step in your cloud computing journey.

Engineering Manager's Handbook. An insider’s guide to managing software development and engineering teams

Morgan Evans

Delightful and customer-centric digital products have become an expectation in the world of business. Engineering managers are uniquely positioned to impact the success of these products and the software systems that power them. Skillful managers guide their teams and companies to develop functional and maintainable systems.This book helps you find your footing as an engineering manager, develop your leadership style, balance your time between engineering and managing, build successful engineering teams in different settings, and work within constraints without sacrificing technical standards or team empathy. You’ll learn practical techniques for establishing trust, developing beneficial habits, and creating a cohesive and high-performing engineering team. You’ll discover effective strategies to guide and contribute to your team’s efforts, facilitating productivity and collaboration.By the end of this book, you’ll have the tools and knowledge necessary to thrive as an engineering manager. Whether you’re just starting out in your role or seeking to enhance your leadership capabilities, this handbook will empower you to make a lasting impact and drive success in your organization.

Mobile Forensics - Advanced Investigative Strategies. Click here to enter text

Oleg Afonin, Vladimir Katalov

Investigating digital media is impossible without forensic tools. Dealing with complex forensic problems requires the use of dedicated tools, and even more importantly, the right strategies. In this book, you’ll learn strategies and methods to deal with information stored on smartphones and tablets and see how to put the right tools to work.We begin by helping you understand the concept of mobile devices as a source of valuable evidence. Throughout this book, you will explore strategies and plays and decide when to use each technique. We cover important techniques such as seizing techniques to shield the device, and acquisition techniques including physical acquisition (via a USB connection), logical acquisition via data backups, over-the-air acquisition. We also explore cloud analysis, evidence discovery and data analysis, tools for mobile forensics, and tools to help you discover and analyze evidence.By the end of the book, you will have a better understanding of the tools and methods used to deal with the challenges of acquiring, preserving, and extracting evidence stored on smartphones, tablets, and the cloud.

Windows Server 2012 Automation with PowerShell Cookbook. If you work on a daily basis with Windows Server 2012, this book will make life easier by teaching you the skills to automate server tasks with PowerShell scripts, all delivered in recipe form for rapid implementation

Ed Goad, EDRICK GOAD

Automating server tasks allows administrators to repeatedly perform the same, or similar, tasks over and over again. With PowerShell scripts, you can automate server tasks and reduce manual input, allowing you to focus on more important tasks. Windows Server 2012 Automation with PowerShell Cookbook will show several ways for a Windows administrator to automate and streamline his/her job. Learn how to automate server tasks to ease your day-to-day operations, generate performance and configuration reports, and troubleshoot and resolve critical problems. Windows Server 2012 Automation with PowerShell Cookbook will introduce you to the advantages of using Windows Server 2012 and PowerShell. Each recipe is a building block that can easily be combined to provide larger and more useful scripts to automate your systems. The recipes are packed with examples and real world experience to make the job of managing and administrating Windows servers easier. The book begins with automation of common Windows Networking components such as AD, DHCP, DNS, and PKI, managing Hyper-V, and backing up the server environment. By the end of the book you will be able to use PowerShell scripts to automate tasks such as performance monitoring, reporting, analyzing the environment to match best practices, and troubleshooting.

Cassandra 3.x High Availability. Click here to enter text. - Second Edition

Robbie Strickland

Apache Cassandra is a massively scalable, peer-to-peer database designed for 100 percent uptime, with deployments in the tens of thousands of nodes, all supporting petabytes of data. This book offers a practical insight into building highly available, real-world applications using Apache Cassandra.The book starts with the fundamentals, helping you to understand how Apache Cassandra’s architecture allows it to achieve 100 percent uptime when other systems struggle to do so. You’ll get an excellent understanding of data distribution, replication, and Cassandra’s highly tunable consistency model. Then we take an in-depth look at Cassandra's robust support for multiple data centers, and you’ll see how to scale out a cluster. Next, the book explores the domain of application design, with chapters discussing the native driver and data modeling. Lastly, you’ll find out how to steer clear of common anti-patterns and take advantage of Cassandra’s ability to fail gracefully.

Box2D for Flash Games. Create amazing and realistic physics-based Flash games using Box2D with this book and

Erin Catto, Emanuele Feronato

Physics games are getting more and more popular, and Box2D is the best choice if you are looking for a free, stable and robust library to handle physics. With Box2D you can create every kind of 2D physics game, only coding is not the fun part, but the game itself.Box2D for Flash Games will guide you through the process of making a Flash physics game starting from the bare bones and taking you by hand through complex features such as forces, joints and motors. As you are learning, your game will have more and more features, like the physics games you are used to playing.The book analyzes two of the most played physics games, and breaks them down to allow readers to build them from scratch in a step-by-step approach.By the end of the book, you will learn how to create basic primitive bodies as well as complex, compound bodies. Motors will give life to cars, catapults and siege machines firing bullets, while a complete collision management will make your game look even more realistic.If you want to make full Flash games with physics, then Box2D for Flash Games will guide you through the entire process of making a Flash physics game.

Modern Time Series Forecasting with Python. Explore industry-ready time series forecasting using modern machine learning and deep learning

Manu Joseph

We live in a serendipitous era where the explosion in the quantum of data collected and a renewed interest in data-driven techniques such as machine learning (ML), has changed the landscape of analytics, and with it, time series forecasting. This book, filled with industry-tested tips and tricks, takes you beyond commonly used classical statistical methods such as ARIMA and introduces to you the latest techniques from the world of ML.This is a comprehensive guide to analyzing, visualizing, and creating state-of-the-art forecasting systems, complete with common topics such as ML and deep learning (DL) as well as rarely touched-upon topics such as global forecasting models, cross-validation strategies, and forecast metrics. You’ll begin by exploring the basics of data handling, data visualization, and classical statistical methods before moving on to ML and DL models for time series forecasting. This book takes you on a hands-on journey in which you’ll develop state-of-the-art ML (linear regression to gradient-boosted trees) and DL (feed-forward neural networks, LSTMs, and transformers) models on a real-world dataset along with exploring practical topics such as interpretability.By the end of this book, you’ll be able to build world-class time series forecasting systems and tackle problems in the real world.

Data Wrangling with SQL. A hands-on guide to manipulating, wrangling, and engineering data using SQL

Raghav Kandarpa, Shivangi Saxena

The amount of data generated continues to grow rapidly, making it increasingly important for businesses to be able to wrangle this data and understand it quickly and efficiently. Although data wrangling can be challenging, with the right tools and techniques you can efficiently handle enormous amounts of unstructured data.The book starts by introducing you to the basics of SQL, focusing on the core principles and techniques of data wrangling. You’ll then explore advanced SQL concepts like aggregate functions, window functions, CTEs, and subqueries that are very popular in the business world. The next set of chapters will walk you through different functions within SQL query that cause delays in data transformation and help you figure out the difference between a good query and bad one. You’ll also learn how data wrangling and data science go hand in hand. The book is filled with datasets and practical examples to help you understand the concepts thoroughly, along with best practices to guide you at every stage of data wrangling.By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with essential techniques and best practices for data wrangling, and will predominantly learn how to use clean and standardized data models to make informed decisions, helping businesses avoid costly mistakes.

Creating Concrete5 Themes. Create high quality concrete5 themes using practical recipes and responsive techniques to make it mobile-ready

Remo Laubacher, Concrete5 Project

Creating a concrete5 theme isn't complicated if there’s already a HTML document. There are only very few PHP functions you’ll have to add, but those are powerful and give you a lot of freedom. As you’ll learn to create mobile ready themes, you’ll start to see that there’s almost no limit in what you can do.Creating Concrete5 Themes is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with a number of examples that will teach you how to create powerful concrete5 themes, change the look of content block elements, and even make your site ready for mobile devices.Creating Concrete5 Themes starts with a few words about the editing concept and architecture of concrete5 and then continues with the creation of a basic theme which gets extended with more and more elements until the theme is mobile ready.You will learn where to find the information necessary to get your own concrete5 site and then get a quick introduction to understand the idea of the in-site editing concept. We’ll then create a theme which is extended with features and more details as we progress. You’ll also see some examples to show you the process of overriding elements from the core without losing the ability to upgrade concrete5 in the future. Once we’ve customized every element in concrete5 to build a complete theme, we’ll have a look at responsive techniques to make your site ready for small screen devices such as mobile phones and tablets. 

The Professional Scrum Master (PSM I) Guide. Successfully practice Scrum with real-world projects and achieve your PSM I certification with confidence

Fred Heath

Ever wondered why you’d use Scrum over other process frameworks? Or what makes Agile just so agile? Or why you should bother with the PSM certification? This book has you covered.The Professional Scrum Master (PSM I) Guide is a comprehensive tutorial that will not only introduce you to the basics of Scrum, but build you up to be ready to pass your PSM I exam first time round. Where other books avoid detail, this guide provides you with detailed practical examples to take you from being an apprentice to becoming a master.Assuming you’re a total beginner, this book will introduce you to Scrum methodologies with detailed use cases, teaching you the secrets of Scrum in such a way that you’ll be well-equipped for the PSM I exam.This book demonstrates the real-world applications of Scrum in a variety of scenarios, all with practical examples.You’ll understand why the structure of your Scrum team matters, what you can achieve with properly planned sprints, and how to create and manage sprint and product backlogs. The chapters are regularly concluded with quizzes relevant to the exam, reinforcing the values you learn on your journey. Finally, it concludes with some exam preparation and myth-dispelling to make sure you have an edge when it comes to earning your certificate. This is a guide that’ll ensure you won’t fall behind in an ever increasingly agile world.