Learning IoT with Particle Photon and Electron. Develop applications on one of the most popular platforms for IoT using Particle Photon and Electron with this fast-paced guide

Rashid Khan, Kajari Ghoshdastidar, Ajith Vasudevan

IoT is basically the network of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.. The number of connected devices is growing rapidly and will continue to do so over years to come. By 2020, there will be more than 20 billion connected devices and the ability to program such devices will be in high demand. Particle provides prototyping boards for IoT that are easy to program and deploy. Most importantly, the boards provided by Particle can be connected to the Internet very easily as they include Wi-Fi or a GSM module.Starting with the basics of programming Particle Photon and Electron, this book will take you through setting up your local servers and running custom firmware, to using the Photon and Electron to program autonomous cars. This book also covers in brief a basic architecture and design of IoT applications. It gives you an overview of the IoT stack. You will also get information on how to debug and troubleshoot Particle Photon and Electron and set up your own debugging framework for any IoT board. Finally, you’ll tinker with the firmware of the Photon and Electron by modifying the existing firmware and deploying them to your boards.By the end of this book, you should have a fairly good understanding of the IoT ecosystem and you should be able to build standalone projects using your own local server or the Particle Cloud Server.

Hands-On Artificial Intelligence for Banking. A practical guide to building intelligent financial applications using machine learning techniques

Jeffrey Ng, Subhash Shah

Remodeling your outlook on banking begins with keeping up to date with the latest and most effective approaches, such as artificial intelligence (AI). Hands-On Artificial Intelligence for Banking is a practical guide that will help you advance in your career in the banking domain. The book will demonstrate AI implementation to make your banking services smoother, more cost-efficient, and accessible to clients, focusing on both the client- and server-side uses of AI.You’ll begin by understanding the importance of artificial intelligence, while also gaining insights into the recent AI revolution in the banking industry. Next, you’ll get hands-on machine learning experience, exploring how to use time series analysis and reinforcement learning to automate client procurements and banking and finance decisions. After this, you’ll progress to learning about mechanizing capital market decisions, using automated portfolio management systems and predicting the future of investment banking. In addition to this, you’ll explore concepts such as building personal wealth advisors and mass customization of client lifetime wealth. Finally, you’ll get to grips with some real-world AI considerations in the field of banking. By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the skills you need to navigate the finance domain by leveraging the power of AI.

Developing Blockchain Solutions in the Cloud. Design and develop blockchain-powered Web3 apps on AWS, Azure, and GCP

Stefano Tempesta, Michael John Pena

As Web3 technologies continue to gain momentum across industries, businesses are looking for new ways to leverage the benefits of Web3 and stay at the forefront of technological innovation. This comprehensive guide offers an in-depth exploration of cloud-native blockchain fundamentals, providing valuable insights into the benefits and challenges of deploying these technologies in the cloud. From foundational concepts to advanced techniques, the book covers everything you need to know about developing and deploying secure, scalable blockchain solutions on AWS, Azure, and GCP. Through hands-on tutorials and projects, you’ll explore the latest tools, technologies, real-world use cases, and best practices to expand your understanding of the field’s complexities and opportunities. This book ensures easy comprehension through practical examples and access to source code on GitHub. As you advance, you’ll master platform selection and apply your newfound knowledge to tackle complex problems and deliver innovative cloud-native blockchain solutions tailored for your specific needs. By the end of this book, you’ll have a deep understanding of cloud-native blockchain deployment and implementation, and you’ll be equipped with the skills and knowledge to build secure and scalable solutions.

Building Modern CLI Applications in Go. Develop next-level CLIs to improve user experience, increase platform usage, and maximize production

Marian Montagnino, William Kennedy

Although graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are intuitive and user-friendly, nothing beats a command-line interface (CLI) when it comes to productivity. Many organizations settle for a GUI without searching for alternatives that offer better accessibility and functionality. If this describes your organization, then pick up this book and get them to rethink that decision.Building Modern CLI Applications in Go will help you achieve an interface that rivals a GUI in elegance yet surpasses it in high-performance execution. Through its practical, step-by-step approach, you’ll learn everything you need to harness the power and simplicity of the Go language to build CLI applications that revolutionize the way you work.After a primer on CLI standards and Go, you’ll be launched into tool design and proper framework use for true development proficiency. The book then moves on to all things CLI, helping you master everything from arguments and flags to errors and API calls. Later, you’ll dive into the nuances of empathic development so that you can ensure the best UX possible, before you finish up with build tags, cross-compilation, and container-based distribution.By the end of this UX book, you’ll be fully equipped to take the performance and flexibility of your organization’s applications to the next level.

Mastering Reinforcement Learning with Python. Build next-generation, self-learning models using reinforcement learning techniques and best practices

Enes Bilgin

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a field of artificial intelligence (AI) used for creating self-learning autonomous agents. Building on a strong theoretical foundation, this book takes a practical approach and uses examples inspired by real-world industry problems to teach you about state-of-the-art RL.Starting with bandit problems, Markov decision processes, and dynamic programming, the book provides an in-depth review of the classical RL techniques, such as Monte Carlo methods and temporal-difference learning. After that, you will learn about deep Q-learning, policy gradient algorithms, actor-critic methods, model-based methods, and multi-agent reinforcement learning. Then, you'll be introduced to some of the key approaches behind the most successful RL implementations, such as domain randomization and curiosity-driven learning.As you advance, you’ll explore many novel algorithms with advanced implementations using modern Python libraries such as TensorFlow and Ray’s RLlib package. You’ll also find out how to implement RL in areas such as robotics, supply chain management, marketing, finance, smart cities, and cybersecurity while assessing the trade-offs between different approaches and avoiding common pitfalls.By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered how to train and deploy your own RL agents for solving RL problems.

Joomla! 2.5 Beginner's Guide. Joomla! is the free and easy way to create websites, and this book is written for absolute beginners who want to learn the basics and go beyond. Packed with helpful screenshots and crystal clear instructions

Eric Tiggeler

Joomla! is one of the most popular open-source Content Management Systems, actively developed and supported by a world-wide user community. Although it's a fun and feature-rich tool, it can be challenging to get beyond the basics and build a site that meets your needs perfectly. Using this book you can create dynamic, interactive web- sites that perfectly fit your needs.Completely updated for Joomla! 2.5, this practical guide teaches you how to create professional, appealing and extendable websites, whether you want to create a full-featured company or club website or build a personal blog site.The Joomla! Beginner's Guide helps beginners to get started quickly and to get beyond the basics to take full advantage of Joomla!'s powerful features. Completely updated from the first book, real-life examples and tutorials will spark your imagination and show you what kind of professional, contemporary, feature-rich websites any developer can achieve with Joomla!. This book thoroughly covers the concepts behind the software and creates a coherent picture of how the software works. This book is not about what Joomla! can do ñ it's about what you can do using Joomla!.

Getting Started with Ghost. Reach out to the world and publish great content with the power of Ghost

Andrew J Boutte, David Balderston, Kezz Bracey

Amazon Connect: Up and Running. Improve your customer experience by building logical and cost-effective solutions for critical call center systems

Jeff Armstrong

Amazon Connect is a pay-as-you-go cloud contact center solution that powers Amazon’s customer contact system and provides an impressive user experience while reducing costs. Connect's scalability has been especially helpful during COVID-19, helping customers with research, remote work, and other solutions, and has driven adoption rates higher. Amazon Connect: Up and Running will help you develop a foundational understanding of Connect's capabilities and how businesses can effectively estimate the costs and risks associated with migration.Complete with hands-on tutorials, costing profiles, and real-world use cases relating to improving business operations, this easy-to-follow guide will teach you everything you need to get your call center online, interface with critical business systems, and take your customer experience to the next level. As you advance, you'll understand the benefits of using Amazon Connect and cost estimation guidelines for migration and new deployments. Later, the book guides you through creating AI bots, implementing interfaces, and leveraging machine learning for business analytics.By the end of this book, you'll be able to bring a Connect call center online with all its major components and interfaces to significantly reduce personnel overhead and provide your customers with an enhanced user experience (UX).