Cryptocurrency mining offers an opportunity for individuals to earn passive income on a daily basis. It is a process through which distributed nodes on a given crypto blockchain confirm transactions sent through the network by other users. These nodes run a copy of the blockchain involved.

They then use software to verify that the transactions sent through the blockchain network are valid and legit as per the requirements of the blockchain.

What You Will Learn: [hide]

• How To Mine Cryptocurrency
• Frequently Asked Questions
• List of the Best Cryptocurrencies to Mine
• Comparison of the Top Cryptocurrencies
• #1) ECOS
• #2) Vertcoin
• #3) Grin
• #4) Monero (XMR)
• #5) ZCash
• #6) Ravencoin (RVN)
• #7) Haven Protocol (XHV)
• #8) Ethereum Classic
• #9) Litecoin (LTC)
• #10) Ethereum
• #11) Monacoin (MONA)
• #12) Bitcoin Gold
• #13) Aeternity (AE)
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading

How To Mine Cryptocurrency

It is easy to earn money from mining given that all you need is connecting a GPU, CPU, or ASIC miner to a mining pool.

Mining pools allow many miners to combine the hash rate or computer processing power and so increase the chances of winning block verification. This is because the verification process is itself a competition in which many miners are competing to verify a block. Only the winning miner wins the specified rewards.

This tutorial contains a list of the best cryptocurrencies to mine now and win top rewards. Besides including the most profitable and easiest cryptocurrency to mine, the tutorial discusses the tools and software you need to mine each cryptocurrency. This helps those looking for information on how to mine cryptocurrencies.

Also Read =>> Cryptocurrency Tutorial

Fact Check: Global GPU shipments have increased 29.1% year-to-year even as gaming and crypto mining are becoming home-based income-generating alternatives for many people due to COVID-19 related reasons. By 2025, 419 million units of GPUs will be shipped noting an increase of 3.7% from last year. 21 percent of PU owners will be using GPUs in the next five years according to the report below.

Pro-Tips:

• The best cryptocurrency to mine is one that generates the highest returns. To find which, use online calculators to compare returns for crypto mining. Nevertheless, you also should choose one that does not need you to spend thousands of dollars on mining hardware. In terms of the last comment, CPU mined ones are great but generate the lowest returns.
• Hands-down, the easiest cryptocurrency to mine allows you to connect your miners to mining pools. Just buy GPU or ASIC-specific miner and subscribe to a pool that charges you a commission on mined profits and with a regular payout.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q #1) Which crypto to mine today? Which cryptocurrency is most profitable to mine?

Answer: Best includes Ethereum, Monaco, Monero, Vertcoin, Grin, Monero, ZCash, Bitcoin Gold, Haven, Ravencoin, Litecoin, and Aeternity. Check comparison mining calculators to confirm because profitability keeps changing. Be sure to check the top cryptocurrency mining software you can use to mine these cryptocurrencies.

Q #2) Which is the best cryptocurrency to invest in?

Answer: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Binance Coin, Ripple, Tron, and Dogecoin. To choose the best cryptocurrency to invest in, be sure to understand cryptocurrency trading, ETFs, mining, and other ways of investing in cryptos.

Suggested Reading =>> Top Cryptocurrencies to Invest

Q #3) Which is the easiest cryptocurrency to mine?

Answer: Monero is the easiest cryptocurrency to mine now because it can be mined via browser extensions and free software over websites. It is even mined via crypto jacking. The mining code can also easily be incorporated into apps and websites to facilitate mining.

=> Contact us to suggest your listing here.

List Of The Best Cryptocurrencies To Mine

Here is the list of popular Cryptocurrencies to mine:

1. ECOS
2. Vertcoin
3. Grin
4. Monero
5. ZCash
6. Ravencoin
7. Haven Protocol
8. Ethereum Classic
9. Litecoin
10. Ethereum
11. Monacoin
12. Bitcoin Gold
13. Aeternity

Comparison of the Top Cryptocurrencies

Tool NameBest ForCategoryPlatformECOSLong-term investmentsCloud and ASIC miningBitcoin BlockchainVertcoinIndividual minersGPU and FPGA miningVertcoin blockchainGrinPrivacy applicationsGPU and ASICs miningGrin blockchainMoneroBeginner minersCPU and GPU miningMonero blockchainZCashPrivacy applicationsGPU miningZCash blockchainRavencoinLow cost miningGPU miningRaven blockchain

Let us review these cryptocurrencies.

#1) ECOS

ECOS — Best for long-term investments.

Bitcoin mining is very profitable under certain conditions. Right now, you should not mine BTC on home computers. It is better to use cloud mining or buy special equipment — ASIC.

The best BTC mining provider in the industry is ECOS.

Features:

• The company provides both options — ASIC mining and cloud mining.
• The minimum price for a cloud mining contract is $50.
• Convenient calculator on the website for choosing a mining contract.
• Daily payments in BTC and detailed transaction history.
• Withdrawals from 0.001 BTC.
• ECOS has a convenient mobile app. It is available on the App Store and Google Play. Tools such as wallets, exchanges, and investment portfolios are available.
• Get a free mining contract for 1 month after registration to test mining.

=> Visit ECOS Website

#2) Vertcoin

Best for individual miners on pools.

Vertcoin was created as a crypto mineable by GPU after Litecoin, which was created to work as a GPU-mineable alternative to Bitcoin, succumbed to ASIC control. Due to the fact that it supports GPU mining, the network is as decentralized as possible.

Features:

• It is not mineable with ASICs or CPU cards.
• VerthashMine software is to be used to mine the crypto.
• Mined with GTX 1080, 1080 Ti, and Radion RX 560, Vega64, RTX 2080, and GTX 1660 cards.
• Can be mined individually or on GPU mining pools.
• Some pools to consider include Coinotron.com, Zpool.ca, miningpoolhub.com, and Bitpoolmining.com. Different pools charge different rates or commissions.

Specifications:

AlgorithmE.g. Proof-of-WorkHashing functionVerthashNetwork Hashrate4.54 GH/sOptions to mineGPU, FPGA

Website: Vertcoin

#3) Grin

Best for private transactions for individuals and companies that do not need transaction tracking or transparency.

Grin is one of that crypto referred to as privacy coins, which facilitate private transactions between individuals or on platforms.

The Grin platform, for instance, does not allow public viewing of the amount sent or sending and receiving addresses. Of course, in comparison, anyone in public can use block explorers to view such details of blockchain transactions for non-privacy coins. Grin uses the MimbleWimble protocol to ensure the privacy of transactions and for scalability.

Features:

• Can be mined with Gminer, GrinGoldMiner, Cudo Miner, and lolMiner GPU mining software. These are downloadable for free.
• Can be mined on pools such as 2miners, and f2pools.com. Different pools have different rates and payout frequencies.
• Can be mined through solo mining with ASICs.
• Grin is lightweight thanks to the MimbleWimble protocol, and it scales based on users not a number of transactions.

Specifications:

AlgorithmCuckatoo32 mining Proof-of-Work algorithmHashing functionCuckatoo32Network Hashrate11.84 KGpsOptions to mineGPU, ASICs

Website: Grin

#4) Monero (XMR)

Best for beginner miners since it can be mined with CPUs.

Monero is one of the best privacy-minded coins and blockchains and enhances the non-traceability of transactions. Unlike Bitcoin where transaction details such as the amount sent, sending, and receiving addresses are visible; these are not visible on Monero. Hence it is complete privacy crypto.

Features:

• Users do not need to invest a lot of money buying CPUs for mining. Also, does not use too much power when mining with CPUs.
• 1 Monero is mined every 24 seconds. The reward for miners is around 4.99 XMR.
• Can be mined solo with GPUs recommended, but also on pools.
• Pools for mining Monero include MineXMR.com, SupportXMR.com, xmr.nanopool.org, monero.crypto-pool.fr.

Specifications:

AlgorithmRandomX proof of work algorithmHashing functionRandomX; CryptoNightNetwork Hashrate2.64 GH/sOptions to minex86, x86–64, ARM and GPUs, ASICs

Website: Monero (XMR)

#5) ZCash

Best for individual miners who prefer private transactions.

Zcash is also a privacy coin that ensures the confidentiality of transactions. There is an option of using public transparent wallet addresses, whose data and history are viewable publicly. These can be used by companies and groups who want traceability and transparency in transactions. For the shielded transaction types, individuals can use them to protect their financial history and privacy.

ZCash features a low fee of .0001 Zcash per transaction. The crypto is backed by scientists from MIT, Technion, Johns Hopkins, Tel Aviv University, and UC Berkeley.

Features:

• ASIC resistance. Can be mined best by GPUs using EWBF Zcash Miner Windows miner. Mineable with CPUs making it very cost-effective for beginners.
• GPU miners can use Optiminer and EWBF Cuda software for optimization. It is also possible to use GUI miner, console & Android mining app.
• Best mining pool is ZEC mining pool which is an internal mining pool. But other pools to mine include Flypool, Nanopool, and Slushpool.
• Block reward after every 75 seconds is 3.125 ZECs. 10 blocks are produced after every 2.5 minutes.

Specifications:

AlgorithmEquihash proof of work algorithmHashing functionSHA256 hashing functionNetwork Hashrate6.76 GS/sOptions to mineCPUs, GPU,

Website: ZCash

#6) Ravencoin (RVN)

Best for beginners and low investment mining.

Ravencoin uses a peer-to-peer network to facilitate the transfer or trading of assets from one party to another. It is based on a Bitcoin fork and is purely based on the community with no master nodes or ICO. Examples of customers include Medici Ventures who at one time completed a $3.6 million securities token transfer using the coin’s blockchain. Medici Ventures, which is owned by Overstock.com, is also a funder of this project.

Features:

• Cannot be mined with ASICs, hence allowing people to mine at low initial costs.
• Popular software you can use to mine Ravencoin includes BMiner, NBMiner, and DamoMiner. MinerGate also allows you to mine it on phone but we doubt it would be much profitable.
• Can be mined with multiple mining pools including 2Miners, Blocksmith, Bsod, Coinotron, Flypool, HeroMiners, Skypool, MiningPoolHub, Nanopool, Suprnova, and WoolyPooly.
• GamerHash also supports the mining of crypto.
• A block is created or mined every minute to generate a block reward of 5,000 RVN.

Specifications:

AlgorithmKawPoW (X16R) type of proof of work algorithmHashing functionNetwork Hashrate6.93 TH/sOptions to mineGPU, CPUs

Website: Ravencoin (RVN)

#7) Haven Protocol (XHV)

Best for holders also known as hodlers.

Haven Protocol is a private coin based on Monero. The platform allows people to convert, transfer, and store monetary value directly from the wallet without involving any middlemen, custodians, and third parties.

Currently, it allows you to convert Haven crypto to other fiat-pegged tokens directly from your wallet. The platform provides synthetic fiat and crypto currencies such as xUSD, xCNY, xAU (Gold) or xBTC for easy conversion and swapping among them.

There is no one deciding the exchange rates on the platform and there are no limits for converting any supported asset.

Features:

• It inherits Monero’s privacy features such as RingCT and stealth addresses. Hence, it can be used for private sending and receiving.
• Having fiat-pegged, gold, and silver pegged coins allows storage of monetary value in a stable form to avoid volatility crashes. After mining, you can convert and store.
• Looking for Haven mining pools? Try Hero Miners, Miner Rocks, Fracking Miner, Hashvault, FairPool, and Hashpool.
• It can be mined with the software used to mine Monero. Software to use to mine Haven Protocol includes BLOC GUI Miner, CryptoDredge, and SRBMineR.

Specifications:

AlgorithmRandomXHashing functionCryptoNightHaven variantNetwork Hashrate42.162 MH/sOptions to mineGPU, CPUs

Website: Haven Protocol (XHV)

#8) Ethereum Classic

Best for companies and organizations who want to run smart contracts.

Ethereum Classic is a fork of Ethereum and preserves the principle “Code is Law” to mean it facilitates individuals and organizations to execute smart contracts or coded business instructions that work on the blockchain with minimal human interference.

Features:

• Mainly mined with Ethminer, Claymore Miner, FinMiner, GMiner, and NBMiner GPU miners. Cruxminer, GMiner, lolMiner, Nanominer, NBMiner, and OpenETC Pool, are also some of the software you can use to mine ETC.
• The crypto can be mined using a variety of pools including Nanopool.org, 2Miners, Ethermine, f2pool, and P2pool among others.
• Can also be mined on a VPS server.
• Ethereum Classic block reward is 3.2 ETC. Each block is created after every 10.3 seconds.

Specifications:

AlgorithmEtchash algorithmHashing functionEthashNetwork Hashrate31.40 TH/sOptions to mineGPUs

Website: Ethereum Classic

#9) Litecoin (LTC)

Best for mining groups.

Litecoin ensures speedy transactions, unlike Bitcoin’s 10 minutes waiting period. It was released under the MIT/X11 license and based on research on cryptocurrencies. It uses an open-source cryptographic protocol and decentralized ledger like many other blockchains.

It was forked from Bitcoin with the plan of being mineable with a CPU and GPU when it became impossible or hard to generate blocks on Bitcoin with CPU and GPUs. However, Litecoin can now only be mined profitably with ASICs.

ASICs have now been developed for the underlying protocol.

Features:

• A block is mined within 2.5 minutes and the current reward per block is 12.5 LTC. This will half in four years.
• Can be mined with Easy Miner, MultiMiner, GUIMiner Scrypt, CPUminer, CGminer Litecoin, and Awesome Miner. These allow you to switch to GPU mining from CPU mining.
• For ASIC miners, the software will most likely be pre-installed in the hardware. Otherwise, you can use the free ASIC/FPGA miner or other software.
• Litecoin mining pools include Litecoinpool, MinerGate, LTC.top, Antpool. F2pool, and ViaBTC.

Specifications:

AlgorithmScrypt and a stream function known as salsa20Hashing functionScryptNetwork Hashrate352.97 TH/sOptions to mineGPU, ASICs

Website: Litecoin (LTC)

#10) Ethereum

Best for smart contracts and corporate miners.

Mining Ethereum profitably requires a GPU, and a fast GPU miner will take 63.7 days to mine one Ethereum. However, chances are better with pool mining as is the case with all other cryptocurrencies.

Soon Ethereum will be based on the Beacon Chain, a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain which will change mining on the blockchain. For now, it is based on the Proof of Work mining algorithm.

Features:

• Ethereum generates a block in seconds and the block reward is 2 Eth plus transaction fees.
• Can be mined with ETHminer, CGMiner, WinEth, BFGMiner, Geth, EasyMiner, T-Rex, and Lolminer. It is not profitable to mine with a CPU.
• Ethereum mining pools include Ethpool, NiceHash, Nanopool, and Dwarfpool.

Specifications:

AlgorithmCombined Proof of Stake and Proof-of-work algorithmsHashing functionPoW and PoSNetwork Hashrate525.12 TH/sOptions to mineGPU, ASICs

Website: Ethereum

#11) Monacoin (MONA)

Best for personal miners.

Monacoin was created in 2013 December and has a very active community in Japan. It is a type of meme coin like the Dogecoin.

Features:

• The block time or the time it takes to mine one block and qualify for reward is 1.5 minutes. You can mine with very little fees.
• The reward per block is 12.5 MONA, and it halves every three years.
• Not able to be mined with ASICs.
• Pools for mining this coin include f2pool, vippool.net, mona.suprnova.cc, la.pool.me, and coinfoundry.org, and bitpoolmining.com.
• Software used to mine this cryptocurrency includes Lyra2REv2 miner, XMR Stak, CGminer, CCMiner, and Suprnova.

Specifications:

AlgorithmLyra2REv2 algorithmHashing functionLyra2REv2Network Hashrate73.44 TH/sOptions to mineGPUs

Website: Monacoin (MONA)

#12) Bitcoin Gold

Best for individual miners.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork of Bitcoin which was formed to support the scaling of the blockchain. It advocated the adoption of the so-called proof-of-work algorithm called Equihash to ensure that major miners — specifically those using ASICs–were not favored in the mining process.

Unlike Bitcoin, it also implements replay protection and unique wallet addresses to increase the safety and security of funds. The coin is listed on very many cryptocurrency exchanges and still has less than 100 reachable nodes as of this month. The highest number of those nodes is found in Germany and United States.

Features:

• It still takes 10 minutes to mine a block on BTG same way for Bitcoin. The block reward for this cryptocurrency is 6.25 BTG.
• Some of the software for mining includes GMiner, CUDA miner, EWBF Cuda Equihash Miner, among others that support the Equihash algorithm.
• Pools with which to mine BTG include ccgmining.com, hashflare.io, minergate.com, and nicehash.com.

Specifications:

AlgorithmProof of work Equihash-BTG algorithmHashing functionEquihash-BTGNetwork Hashrate2.20 MS/sOptions to mineGPU

Website: Bitcoin Gold

#13) Aeternity (AE)

Best for smart contracts.

Aeternity enables users to launch and run smart contracts or decentralized applications that scale through state channels. Smart contracts can be run off the chain. Its use-cases include decentralized finance, payments, loans, shares, identity, voting and governance, IoT, and gaming.

It has been used to develop fungible, non-fungible, restricted fungible, and restricted non-fungible tokens. The coin was launched with the motive of increasing the scalability of dApps and smart contracts, sharding, and off-chain contracts.

Features:

• It takes about 3 minutes to confirm a block on the Aeternity blockchain. The reward per block mined is 124 AE.
• Software for mining includes CryptoDredge and Bminer. The NBminer or Gmeiner can also be used on NVIDIA hardware. You can also try out HSPMinerAE, NiceHash.
• Mining pools to mine this coin includes beepool.org, 2miners.com, woolypooly.com multi-coin mining pool. The most popular pool used to mine this coin is the 2miners pool with a share of 58% followed by beepool.org at 41%.

Specifications:

AlgorithmCuckooCycle proof of work algorithmHashing functionCuckooCycleNetwork Hashrate28.48 KGpsOptions to mineGPUs, CPUs, ASICs

Website: Aeternity (AE)

Conclusion

In conclusion, the best coins and cryptocurrencies to mine today are those that offer low-cost mining options. It should be cheaper to start to mine. If you are looking for the cheapest crypto to mine, Monero and Ravencoin will be a good choice. Monero, for instance, can be mined on CPUs with normal computer hardware resources.

Nevertheless, Bitcoin and Ethereum should be your top choice if looking for the most profitable cryptocurrencies to mine.

Most cryptocurrencies require having at least a GPU to mine, but the most profitable requires investing in ASICs. It can be expensive. However, we recommend mining on a cryptocurrency mining pool once you have the mining hardware and software ready.

You will pay a mining fee but most pools charge a commission on the profit earned so you do not even worry about paying fees without earning anything. Pools increase your earnings from mining because they have very high mining hash rates gotten by combining hash rates from many people. They have the highest chance of winning blocks or mining blocks than solo mining.

With 90 years expereince in this sector, Cepsa promises to distribute high quality lubricant and oil all over the world for every kind of vehicles and machines. Cepsa lubricants and greases are processed in a way that it abides by all kinds of safety controls to enhance vehicles and machines performance. Apart from that it is registered in international engine and machine manufactures by OEM, with a quality ISO certification “9001” and OHSAS “18001”.

Now Al-Safi groups has been affiliated with Cepsa as exclusive distributor in Iraq . Which gives the rights to Al-Safi group to distribute Cepsa lubricants and oil that fits with market demand

A California driver’s license (DL) is a card which gives you permission to operate a motor vehicle. A DL includes your true full name, birthdate, mailing address, signature, photograph, and physical description. The card must be in your possession anytime you operate a motor vehicle.

Planning future travels? As of the new May 3, 2023 deadline, you will not be allowed to use your driver’s license to board a domestic flight unless it is REAL ID compliant. Learn More.

You need a valid California DL to operate a motor vehicle. Learn about the types of DLs offered and the requirements for applying for one.

You can start your application for a DL online and finish the process at a DMV office. There’s an application fee for original, renewal, and replacement DLs.

License Types

There are two main categories of DLs: noncommercial and commercial. Within the noncommercial category, there are sub-types of licenses that authorize drivers to operate specific types of motor vehicles. Details about the categories and sub-types of licenses can be found below, as well as in the California Driver Handbook.

There are four types of noncommercial DLs:

• Basic DL (Class C): A standard vehicle or truck for personal use on California roadways.
• Motorcycle (Class M1 or M2): 2-wheel motorized vehicle. Learn how to apply for a motorcycle license.
• Travel trailer/fifth wheel (Noncommercial Class A): Over 15,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR), or a trailer coach over 10,000 pounds GVWR (when the towing is not for compensation).
• Housecar/motorhome (Noncommercial Class B): Over 40 feet, but not over 45 feet (with endorsement).

All noncommercial DLs are available as either REAL ID compliant or federal non-compliant cards.

How to Apply for a Driver’s License (DL) if You’re Under 18 Years Old

How to Apply for a Driver’s License (DL) if You’re Over 18 Years Old

About REAL ID DLs

REAL ID compliant DLs are noncommercial or commercial licenses that also allow you to board domestic flights, enter military bases, and enter most secure federal facilities.

All California REAL ID compliant DL cards contain a California grizzly bear and a star on the front upper-right corner of the card.

Individuals applying for a DL through AB 60 are unable to apply for a REAL ID compliant card.

Additional Card Markings

• Veteran designation: Eligible veterans can add the word “VETERAN” to the front of their DL to indicate that they served in the United States (U.S.) Military. This designation may grant individuals access to certain privileges, benefits, or compensation associated with being a veteran without having to carry and produce a Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty (DD Form 214).
• You must provide a completed Veteran Status Verification Form (VSD-001) (issued by a County Veterans Service Office) and pay an additional $5 fee at the DMV office to receive the veteran designation on your DL.
• Organ and tissue donor: When you add your name to the Donate Life California Organ and Tissue Donor Registry, you’re legally authorizing the recovery of organs and tissues in the event of your death. A pink “DONOR” dot will be printed on your DL.

According to Dr Martins

“Don’t give an excuse, stop energy misuse.”

As the world’s leading nuclear supplier, we’re uniquely equipped to help. For more than 60 years, we’ve guided nuclear plants through every stage of their lifecycles, from site selection, design, construction and start-up to total operations management. We also have far-reaching experience in meeting the licensing, environmental permitting and other regulatory challenges associated with pre-plant planning, as well as the deactivation, decommissioning and remediation services required for post-plant retirement and site revitalization.

While competing companies tout a range of comparable nuclear services, none can offer the vast institutional knowledge, skills and proficiencies that we do.

Our Government Services team brings Westinghouse’s extensive commercial nuclear experience and expertise to every nuclear focus area, from environmental management and national security and deterrence to nuclear energy, science and technology, research and development, and legacy management.

Westinghouse has been advancing nuclear power plant design and operations for more than 60 years

When it comes to operating nuclear power plants, no one understands what it takes to maximize their safety, performance and longevity better than the company that builds and operates them for a living.

Our decades of experience informs and enhances our ability to provide complete turnkey management services to any nuclear power plant in the world, from the essential task of meeting operating, regulatory and manufacturing mandates to the critical challenge of maximizing operating margins, increasing power output and extending plant life.

We’re experts in the everyday tasks of delivering, storing and disposing nuclear fuel; designing and manufacturing fuel-handling equipment; executing power outages with minimal downtime; supplying, repairing and replacing nuclear components; and providing complete training, engineering and automation services.

Safe and Reliable Performance

Safety, predictability, reliability and efficient, worry-free performance — you can count on Westinghouse to deliver these promises to maximize your plant’s operation.

The term page size in the SEO world refers to the downloaded file size of a given web page. The page size is made up of all the files that make up the page. A typical web page is made up of several files that may include HTML, CSS, Javascript, or image files, as well as other resources.

How does page size work?

All these files have different sizes that, when added up, equal the page size. For example, the page size for a web page that is made up of a HTML document that is 110 KB in size, an image whose size is 223 KB and a sheet file whose size is 87 KB will be 420 KB.

When you review your site with SEOptimer, you can easily identify the total page size of your website with the most contribution. Images generally contribute the most, embedded video can as well, sometimes script or CSS style bloat can contribute. With the screenshot below, you’ll notice that Javascript is actually the heaviest. With more plugins, marketing softwares, you can get carried away and increase your page size quite a bit.

Web page sizes have been growing steadily over the years. The first web page on the internet was only 4 KB in size. This was particularly because browsers back then did not support a lot of things that they do today. For example, it was not until 1993 that browsers began to support images. According to httparchive the average web page size in 2017 was 3 MB. This is a huge increase from the 1.6 MB average of 2014. It is predicted that the average page size will be 4 MB by 2019.

According to Pingdom’s Average Webpage in 2017 report, an average 819 KB was dedicated to video and 1,818 KB for images.

Google recommends 500 KB given that 1.49 MB takes seven seconds to load using a fast 3G connection. Also, if you upload files that are larger than 500 KB to your website, then the Google crawler will not be able to crawl anything above its 500 KB size limit.

Why is page size important?

Page size does matter when considering the search engine ranking for your web pages. It will not only affect the ranking of your website but also the performance of your site. Some of the reasons you should focus on the size of your web page include:

Load Speeds

According to Google webmasters, load speed is one of the factors considered when ranking web pages. Pages that load faster rank higher than slow-loading ones. This is particularly because slow pages are not useful to most people given their higher bounce rate.

According to Neil Patel, about 40% of site visitors will leave a website if it does not load in three seconds. How does this relate to the page size? According to a Yottaa report, page size directly affects the load speed of a web page.

Mobile Search

The increased use of smartphones has positively affected the use of mobile phones in browsing the internet. In 2015, Google announced that for the first time the use of mobile phones to conduct online searches had overtaken desktops in the top ten world economies. In 2018, Google initiated mobile-first indexing. This is a huge concern because web pages take more time to load on mobile devices than on desktops. According to Lukew, 4G smartphones are 12% slower while 3G phones are 40% slower than desktops in loading web pages. The only way to improve load time on mobile devices is to reduce the size of your web pages. This is important because Google considers mobile responsiveness when deciding SEO rankings.

Web Hosting Costs

Hosting plans for your website is based on bandwidth. The company hosting your website estimates the size of bandwidth based on the page size, number of pages and number of visitors. If your website is made up of pages with larger sizes then chances are you will need more bandwidth than you currently use. This increases the cost of hosting your website.

Page size best practices

Today internet marketing requires a lot of balancing between the various factors at play. Page sizes have been growing steadily over the years. One reason for this is the popularity of images online. A majority of the people visiting your site will not read your web pages if they have no attractive images and graphics. It is therefore important to balance between the use of images and minimization of the size of your web pages. To get everything right, here are a number of best practices to follow:

Optimize images

Images play an important role in websites. They help pass information that words alone cannot. However, the use of images increases the size of a web page which considerably lowers the load speed of the page. To improve the speed of your website it is important to consider compressing or resizing images to the recommended size per file of 500 KB.

Simply compressing images and text can be a game changer — when done correctly, 30% of pages save more than 250 KB.

There are a number of tools you can use to compress or resize images effectively:

• kraken.io
• Compressor.io
• Compressjpeg
• Jpegmini

Another way to optimize images is to use CSS sprites. This refers to combining several images into a single image and then applying CSS to display an individual image as required. This saves bandwidth because fewer requests are sent for the images.

Avoid unnecessary custom fonts

Custom font adds to the appeal of your website but can also make the page heavy, increasing load time and producing negative results. Avoiding unnecessary custom fonts will help reduce the size of your website and decrease its load time, ultimately increasing the number of page visitors.

Minify resources

Minifying resources is the process of eliminating redundant or unnecessary data from your web pages without affecting how they are processed by browsers. For example, minification could involve the removal of unused codes, code comments or shorter function names. Google provides a detailed guide on how to go about minifying resources.

The scenery or surrounding setting in this new home was very different than all the others had ever been. There was no available housing on the surrounding fenced perimeters of his new change of assignment, so my dad was forced to find something off-base. Prague, Arkansas was about fourteen miles from Pine Bluff Arsenal, my dad’s new assignment, and was out in the middle of nowhere. Hell, there wasn’t even a Wal-Mart. This was — the boonies.

But being an army brat, I welcomed a new adventure and the old farmhouse we’d pulled up to was just such a place to start this new experience. While I’d never been a “city boy,” I most definitely wasn’t a “farm boy” either. I reckon I was stuck somewhere in between.

The sprawling pastures and hills looked like an inviting place to explore — but the woods way out past the fields — they intrigued me most. I’d never seen such a large stand of trees. I wonder if there are any dangerous wild animals that live out there.

My dad was gone most days until late in the evenings. Mom sorted through moving boxes and after I set my room up — l left out the back screen door and into this brand-new unexplored world. I reveled in the idea of being alone and walking today. I had my canteen and a backpack with a few snacks and my trusty buck knife I’d gotten my last birthday, in my pocket. Ready for just about anything. The trees appeared to be a distant walk out to them from our back porch. I guessed a couple a mile or so. A huge field of something growing separated our house from the stand of trees in the distance. When I stepped into it, it was thicker and taller than it had looked. Be easy to get lost or turned around I ‘spect. I looked across the smaller field to our neighbor’s house to the north. The only other place nearby. Mom said she’d heard they might have a son close to my age, but it looked pretty quiet over that way, ‘specially since summer had barely just begun. If there was a boy my age, surely, he’d be up and about by now. Oh well, I wasn’t much of a people person anyway.

It had been an hour and the sun began to rise high overhead. Sweat beads trickled down my forehead and the salty mixture dripped into my eyes. I wiped them away with my handkerchief bandana and then glanced to see if I could still see home. I could tell where the house probably was, but it was hidden. It appeared I’d walked over halfway between the forest in front of me and home behind. I looked at the sun and guessed it must be getting close to 11 am by now.

When I’m hiking alone, I sometimes like singing songs. At first just inside my head, but then after I realize there ain’t no one nearby that could possibly hear me no matter how poorly I screeched, I began belting out a Charlie Daniels song. My voice had begun to do it’s changin’ thing, momma said I was becoming a man, “People say I’m no good, and crazy as a lune…” I loved the Charley Daniels Band, probably because my dad listened to him. Mom hated it when I played Charlie’s records loud in my room on the turntable. That was one of the gifts I’d gotten from Mom when the guilt overtook her about telling me we’d be moving again. Yes, I’m spoiled in some ways, I got gifts every time we moved. Guilt gifts is what I called ’em. But I’d sure enough take advantage. Why the hell not? I was moving either way, might as well profit from it! Didn’t matter anyway, when my dad got orders, he had to follow them. So did mom and me.

Is metaverse the latest easily dismissed buzzword or a new platform you might have to understand? That’s the most important question right now. The easiest answer is “vaporware,” but that ignores the business reality of 2021. The biggest tech companies are pouring a lot of money into this next iteration of the internet, and the building blocks of the metaverse are available on the market.

Here is a look at what the metaverse is, why it’s relevant to your work and what components you can experience right now.

SEE: Metaverse cheat sheet: Everything you need to know (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

What is the metaverse?

More about Innovation

• CES 2022 Innovation Awards: An airbag for your hips, a hands-free selfie drone and VR for ADH
• Paging Zefram Cochrane: Humans have figured out how to make a warp bubble
• New deal means United Airlines may be flying hydroelectric planes as early as 2028
• Quick glossary: Metaverse (TechRepublic Premium)

The metaverse is a vision for a new place to interact with other humans and bots to play games, conduct business, socialize and shop. That’s the metaverse of the future. Right now, the metaverse is a grab bag of hardware, software and unrelated experiences. You likely have seen one piece of the metaverse in a standalone form, as a game or maybe a training session. There is no connective tissue to bring all these components together — yet.

If you’ve played Pokemon Go and caught a creature that you can only see via your phone, that’s augmented reality (or location-based entertainment, if you want to get picky about it).

Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms are an example of mixed reality. You use the Oculus Quest 2 to join a virtual office space, but you also can see your hands and your keyboard. Also, colleagues not joining the meeting via a VR headset can join via a video feed that shows up in the virtual world just as it would in a live conference room.

A Horizon Workroom can hold 16 people in the virtual space and 34 more people can join via video conference.

Image: Facebook

With the virtual office platform Virbela, you navigate an office in the cloud with a full-body avatar via your keyboard. The platform uses directional sound, which means that a person’s voice changes as he or she moves closer to your avatar or farther away. The experience is not quite like a video game but it definitely feels like a new space for interacting with colleagues.

If you’ve played Animal Crossing or Fortnite, those online worlds give a hint of what the metaverse could look like. You’ll be able to build your own world or visit someone else’s in your true-to-life form or in a completely new shape.

Companies and military trainers are using virtual reality and augmented reality for training as well. Penske Truck Leasing uses the XR Mentor training platform to train technicians and support them in the field. Instructors live stream classes to students, and students can use assisted reality devices to refer to training documents when working on vehicles.

It is possible to buy real estate in virtual worlds, such as Decentraland and Cryptovoxels, although those are definitely the world of early adopters. If you’ve made it as far as buying cryptocurrency or NFTs, you’ve also gotten a taste of the metaverse.

The difference between these experiences and the full-on metaverse is the physical sensation of being in another place and sharing it with other people. For most of these experiences, you are interacting with the online world through a controller or other piece of hardware. Although VR worlds are immersive, the headsets are still awkward, which currently defines the entire experience as something out of the ordinary.

SEE: All of TechRepublic’s cheat sheets and smart person’s guides

Adam Compton, director of strategy for Schneider Electric, sees the metaverse as a fully immersive, partially real life, partially digital experience that runs in parallel with the physical world. “It’s something that we don’t recognize when we’re stepping in and out of the two spaces,” he said.

Mark Zuckerberg and other tech leaders imagine a very different metaverse when they talk about it. The metaverse currently under development would be right next to reality and always on. It would have its own currency and objects in the metaverse would be interoperable–for instance, you could wear a hoodie bought in one corner of the metaverse in every other spot you visit.

World leaders and individuals are starting to recognize the downside of one company running a giant social experiment, such as Facebook. It’s easy to imagine the biases that are built into algorithms showing up in the metaverse as well. Figuring out ethics for AI will be a good training ground for making sure that the metaverse is equally accessible to everyone and that there’s no automatic penalty for a thin bank account or a slow internet connection.

Facebook announced in September 2021 a $50 million investment designed to avoid the mistakes of the past while building the metaverse. The company will work with Howard University, Seoul National University and the University of Hong Kong to study safety, ethics, equity and design concepts for the metaverse.

What are the key tech terms I need to know to understand the metaverse?

Some of these terms are used interchangeably. Some experiences mix the various versions of reality; for instance, Horizon Workrooms require an Oculus Quest 2 headset to join a virtual meeting, but colleagues can also join via video conference.

Data and the policies that protect it: 4 essential plans to have in place

These four sample policies can help you protect your data by ensuring it’s properly encrypted, stored safely, only accessible by certain people, and securely backed up.

Research provided by TechRepublic Premium

Assisted reality: This refers to any technology that allows a person to view a screen and use hands-free controls to interact with it. Realwear devices fit in this category.

Augmented reality: This technology uses the real world as the setting and adds computer-generated images to this view. Retailers use this to show how a new sofa would look in a customer’s living room.

Meatspace: This is the physical world where most of us spend most of our time.

Mixed reality: This term describes a view of the real world with the addition of virtual objects that look and act like real objects. Users can interact with both virtual objects and real ones.

Multiverse: The general definition this term generally refers to many distinct universes operating independently of each other. In a tech/internet/social media context, this is Facebook, Minecraft, Instagram, Twitch, Roblox, Fortnite, Discord and all the other virtual social media and gaming places where people socialize, play and shop. In theory, the metaverse could bring all these multiverses into one place

Virtual reality: This is an immersive experience that requires a headset. There are VR games that take users to different worlds as well as training sessions that are set in the real world.

Is the metaverse the same as virtual reality?

“Calling the metaverse virtual reality is like saying the mobile internet is an app.”

That’s how venture capitalist Matthew Ball explained it during a conversation with Gene Park and Shanon Liao from the Washington Post. Ball wrote a blog post about the metaverse in January 2020 as he saw the “pieces” of the metaverse become more real. In June 2021, Ball expanded his thoughts on the metaverse with a nine-part primer that covers a framework, hardware, networking, computer, virtual platforms, payments, content services and evolving user behaviors.

Ball initially wrote about the metaverse to explain why the last year or so has been a turning point for virtual reality. He saw the worldbuilding of Fortnite and the growing popularity of the game as significant milestones for the metaverse.

“In 2018, you could really start to see that this was not a game, it was something quite different,” he said. “It was taking ideas that had been slowly growing for quite some time and then changing them in a way that feels critically different.”

He compared these developments to the way that the iPhone and the app store represented game-changing moments for the mobile internet. “You could tell that the mobile internet, something that had existed for 15 years, was entering a new phase,” he said. “Fortnite felt a lot like that to me, Roblox was feeling a lot like that to me.”

Ball also mentioned recent comments from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who tweets frequently about the metaverse. Sweeney had shared code from Unreal from the ’90s to illustrate that people have been thinking about virtual spaces as social spaces for economies for decades.

“His point was that it was only in the last few years that not just have the experiences emerged to bring that to fruition but the core underlying technologies required started to be real and not science fiction,” Ball said in the conversation with the Post.

Ball said it’s a mistake to use inconsistent definitions of the metaverse as proof that the idea is just the latest buzzword.

“If the metaverse were crisply known and codified, it would not be so disruptive,” he said in the conversation with the Washington Post reporters. “Clarity is the antithesis of change.”

Do I need a headset to visit the metaverse?

Ideally, you won’t need a headset in the metaverse at some point in the future when that iteration arrives. In 2021, you need an Oculus Quest 2, a Rift S or a Sony PlayStation VR or a HTC Vive to play virtual reality games. If you need to take a training class in virtual reality or augmented reality, you’ll need Microsoft’s HoloLens or one of Lenovo’s headsets. VRFocus named the Magic Leap the best enterprise solution in its 2020 “Better-Than-Reality Awards” for its spatial computing collaboration package. Magic Leap and VMWare just announced a partnership that includes support for the Workspace ONE XR Hub on Magic Leap 2.

When all the parts and pieces mature, Gil Elbaz, CTO and co-founder of Datagen, predicts that people will want AR glasses instead of a MacBook Pro or even a cell phone. VR devices could replace TVs and computers. “It’s going to turn into one device, we’re just technically not ready for it yet,” he said, adding that it will take three to five years for devices to get to some level of maturity. “It’s a smart investment but it is a long-term investment,” he said.

Facebook’s Reality Labs Research is working to improve the form factor of VR hardware. The team sees wristbands and glasses as interfaces for AR that “won’t force us to choose between interacting with our devices and the world around us.” The lab is also developing a VR headset that makes the user’s eyes visible to other people in the room.

Lenovo’s AR/VR product line includes smartglasses, monocular and binocular devices. The company’s ThinkReality platform includes a software development kit, cloud and device services.

Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3 Smart Glasses have multiple cameras, integrated speakers and microphones, binocular 1080p resolution displays and software that runs voice, object and image recognition, reads barcodes and includes head/gaze tracking. Factory and repair technicians use the devices during training and also to get guidance from experts when working on site.

Is the metaverse relevant to my work?

If you are responsible for training or if you work in the manufacturing sector, you’ll be among the first to work with the building blocks of the metaverse. Nathan Pettyjohn, commercial AR/VR lead of the Lenovo intelligent devices group, said manufacturing is the number one vertical for Lenovo’s AR/VR product line, particularly companies that want their field workers or people in the warehouse to have hands free assistance through augmented reality.

“For an industrial worker who needs their hands free, they can use voice commands to pull up schematics and blueprints without touching the device,” he said.

Lenovo’s Think Reality A3 device is designed for mixed reality experiences, such as a technician using an online tutorial while repairing a machine. The smartglasses provide hands-free operation and can overlay digital objects onto physical ones.

“You can look over at what you’re working on and the digital content stays out of your view, but then you can turn back to the guidance when you need to,” he said.

Lenovo also has a partnership with Realwear, a company that makes an assisted reality device designed for technical work.

“It’s like putting an Android tablet in front of your eye,” he said. “Also, it’s an all-in-one device so you’re not tethered to a compute box or a phone.”

Lenovo’s goal with the ThinkReality platform is to be hardware agnostic for all the company’s AR/VR customers.

“The software platform allows customers to manage Lenovo or third party devices as well as applications and users,” he said.

Pettyjohn has been working with augmented reality and virtual reality for more than 10 years. He is the founder and president of The AR/VR Association, a group with 21 chapters in the U.S., four in Canada, 15 in Europe, seven in Asia, two in the Middle East and one each in Africa, South America, and Australia. The group has weekly online meetings and 22 committees that cover 20 industry verticals ranging from energy and real estate to story-telling and location-based entertainment.

Pettyjohn said that the AR/VR market has the potential to grow to more than $1 billion for Lenovo.

What’s the metaverse connection to hybrid work?

As the debate rages about remote work, hybrid schedules and in-person work, virtual reality and offices in the cloud could be a way to create a common experience for all employees, regardless of where they are physically located. Forrester’s recent report, “Your Virtual Office in the Cloud,” suggests that creating an office in a virtual setting could be an antidote to Zoom fatigue. Benefits could include:

• Replicating the in-person office experience.
• Creating a shared experience and reinforcing corporate values.
• Developing a shared culture.
• Ending the open office plan vs. private office debate.

New and established companies are already trying out this kind of virtual space. Accenture has an Nth floor, a virtual space that connects the company’s 500,000 employees and customers in virtual meeting rooms and event spaces.

eXp Realty is a remote-first company that has about 60,000 agents in 17 countries but no physical headquarters. Instead the company operates in a “cloud-based campus,” doing everything from recruiting agents to holding board meetings in a virtual office.

What companies are building the metaverse?

The metaverse will need a massive technological infrastructure, ranging from compute power to edge computing to 3D imaging to content to finance and commerce systems. And, as the metaverse is seen as the next iteration of the internet, every company that has an internet presence will want to stake a claim in the metaverse as well.

Ball, the venture capitalist interested in the metaverse, also is a co-founder of Ball Metaverse Research Partners, which maintains the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sea is a consumer internet company that includes entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services. Tencent Holdings is a multinational internet company based in China.

Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, Alphabet, Coinbase, Electronic Arts, Samsung, Adobe, Alibaba, Disney, PayPal and Square are also in the fund.

What are real-world use cases of the metaverse?

Training is one of the more common use cases. Entertainment is one of the first industries to offer virtual reality experiences for customers, while manufacturing and healthcare have been among the first to incorporate mixed reality and augmented reality experiences for employees.

Here are a few examples of how companies are using the building blocks of the metaverse today to conduct remote training and create new products and services.

Sports and entertainment

At the game company Unity, Peter Moore is the head of the sports and live entertainment and recently launched Unity Metacast. This platform will mirror professional sports in 3D in real time.

Cameras capture athletes on the field and the data is used to create digital twins. The first 3D broadcast was a match between two mixed martial arts fighters filmed in a small arena with 106 cameras. Moore told the Financial Times that he expects to expand the technology to fewer cameras and bigger playing spaces. Capturing life action and digitizing it immediately could make it easier to create NFTs from memorable moments from games. The NBA’s approach to NFTs–Top Shots cards–could expand to other sports.

Healthcare

Doctors have been one of the first groups to use AR for collaboration. Microsoft’s mixed reality headsets are also enabling medical professionals from around the globe to virtually collaborate during procedures for a 21st century take on surgical operations. Surgeons can operate Microsoft’s HoloLens with hand gestures and voice commands to bring up 3D images from scans, access patient data and contact other specialists. This hands-free control is a significant benefit to the hardware for doctors and other healthcare professionals.

Training

NASA uses AR and VR aboard the space station for remote control of robots or to complete maintenance tasks with an AR assist. In one particular project, astronaut Scott Kelly used a Microsoft HoloLens headset to conduct ISS training and do future mission prep. During these tests, a member of mission control on Earth streamed Kelly’s field of view via the headset and also drew images rendered in 3D on the astronaut’s HoloLens display.

Astronaut Scott Kelly wearing a HoloLens headset on the International Space Station.

Image: NASA

What are the barriers to the growth of the metaverse?

Elbaz of Datagen said it’s still very early days for the metaverse because the software and devices are not ready, VR is still in the early stages of development and AR is not even that far along yet. “We haven’t found a useful application for it internally and we deal with 3D all the time,” he said.

Adam Compton, director of strategy for Schneider Electric, said that gaming and entertainment will continue to be the tip of the spear for virtual experiences. “Early adopters tend to find the easiest path and follow that, and that gets people used to it and then something else comes along for a different application for the same technology,” he said.

Right now learning of all kinds is the most applicable use case for VR, he said. This includes learning how to use or repair a product, how to complete a maintenance procedure, or simply learning a new skill.

“This could be a differentiator for some companies, in that they’re going to sell you this thing, but also going to make sure you are using it right,” he said.

Compton sees the current workforce as one barrier to the metaverse. The metaverse will require extensive compute power, not to mention enough engineers, designers and network admins to keep it running.

“The Wall Street Journal recently wrote that annual job postings for cloud engineers in data centers have gone up 90% in the last year and they can’t fill them,” he said. “Without the human workforce to standardize the infrastructure, engineer it, deploy and maintain it, that will be a big gating factor.”

Another gating factor is a robust edge computing infrastructure. Compton said that the metaverse will benefit from smart city networks.

“Some cities are talking about putting high bandwidth capable microdata centers into public places to make smart city initiatives possible,” he said. “All of these things are coming along now that will help this infrastructure be ready in the future.”

Compton said that using VR now for training, customer care and marketing are good use cases for companies who want to test out the technology now.

Compton said Schneider has used VR to give tours of modern data centers with a 360-degree view of the facility and to create other immersive experiences for customers.

“I don’t think it will break away from fringe usage and specifically entertainment and gaming in the next five years,” he said.

Facebook becomes Meta

At Connect 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was changing Facebook’s name to Meta. He said this reflected the company’s new focus on the next iteration of the mobile internet. Zuckerberg sees interoperability, open standards and contributions from thousands of creators and software developers as the keys to success for this new “place” that really doesn’t exist yet.

The company plans to invest $150 million in a fund to train people to build the metaverse and to subsidize devices that people will use to access the metaverse. Zuckerberg also said that the company plans to invest billions of dollars over the next decade to build the metaverse.

At the event, company executives announced plans for new SDKs for the mixed reality Spark platform as well as Horizon. This is the company’s virtual reality platform that runs on Oculus Quest with options for both Home and Office environments. Zuckerberg also announced that in the near future the company will no longer require users to have a Facebook account to use the Quest.

He made no mention of the latest questions about Facebook’s ethics and business practices. A whistleblower who released thousands of internal documents claims that the company’s own research identified how people can become radicalized on the platform. Numerous news organizations have analyzed the Facebook Papers and found that Zuckerberg is personally involved in many content moderation decisions. This creates two sets of rules and seems to allow some groups and individuals to publish violent content and hate speech that the company claims to ban from the platform.

Is metaverse the latest easily dismissed buzzword or a new platform you might have to understand? That’s the most important question right now. The easiest answer is “vaporware,” but that ignores the business reality of 2021. The biggest tech companies are pouring a lot of money into this next iteration of the internet, and the building blocks of the metaverse are available on the market.

Here is a look at what the metaverse is, why it’s relevant to your work and what components you can experience right now.

SEE: Metaverse cheat sheet: Everything you need to know (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

What is the metaverse?

More about Innovation

• CES 2022 Innovation Awards: An airbag for your hips, a hands-free selfie drone and VR for ADH
• Paging Zefram Cochrane: Humans have figured out how to make a warp bubble
• New deal means United Airlines may be flying hydroelectric planes as early as 2028
• Quick glossary: Metaverse (TechRepublic Premium)

The metaverse is a vision for a new place to interact with other humans and bots to play games, conduct business, socialize and shop. That’s the metaverse of the future. Right now, the metaverse is a grab bag of hardware, software and unrelated experiences. You likely have seen one piece of the metaverse in a standalone form, as a game or maybe a training session. There is no connective tissue to bring all these components together — yet.

If you’ve played Pokemon Go and caught a creature that you can only see via your phone, that’s augmented reality (or location-based entertainment, if you want to get picky about it).

Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms are an example of mixed reality. You use the Oculus Quest 2 to join a virtual office space, but you also can see your hands and your keyboard. Also, colleagues not joining the meeting via a VR headset can join via a video feed that shows up in the virtual world just as it would in a live conference room.

A Horizon Workroom can hold 16 people in the virtual space and 34 more people can join via video conference.

Image: Facebook

With the virtual office platform Virbela, you navigate an office in the cloud with a full-body avatar via your keyboard. The platform uses directional sound, which means that a person’s voice changes as he or she moves closer to your avatar or farther away. The experience is not quite like a video game but it definitely feels like a new space for interacting with colleagues.

If you’ve played Animal Crossing or Fortnite, those online worlds give a hint of what the metaverse could look like. You’ll be able to build your own world or visit someone else’s in your true-to-life form or in a completely new shape.

Companies and military trainers are using virtual reality and augmented reality for training as well. Penske Truck Leasing uses the XR Mentor training platform to train technicians and support them in the field. Instructors live stream classes to students, and students can use assisted reality devices to refer to training documents when working on vehicles.

It is possible to buy real estate in virtual worlds, such as Decentraland and Cryptovoxels, although those are definitely the world of early adopters. If you’ve made it as far as buying cryptocurrency or NFTs, you’ve also gotten a taste of the metaverse.

The difference between these experiences and the full-on metaverse is the physical sensation of being in another place and sharing it with other people. For most of these experiences, you are interacting with the online world through a controller or other piece of hardware. Although VR worlds are immersive, the headsets are still awkward, which currently defines the entire experience as something out of the ordinary.

SEE: All of TechRepublic’s cheat sheets and smart person’s guides

Adam Compton, director of strategy for Schneider Electric, sees the metaverse as a fully immersive, partially real life, partially digital experience that runs in parallel with the physical world. “It’s something that we don’t recognize when we’re stepping in and out of the two spaces,” he said.

Mark Zuckerberg and other tech leaders imagine a very different metaverse when they talk about it. The metaverse currently under development would be right next to reality and always on. It would have its own currency and objects in the metaverse would be interoperable–for instance, you could wear a hoodie bought in one corner of the metaverse in every other spot you visit.

World leaders and individuals are starting to recognize the downside of one company running a giant social experiment, such as Facebook. It’s easy to imagine the biases that are built into algorithms showing up in the metaverse as well. Figuring out ethics for AI will be a good training ground for making sure that the metaverse is equally accessible to everyone and that there’s no automatic penalty for a thin bank account or a slow internet connection.

Facebook announced in September 2021 a $50 million investment designed to avoid the mistakes of the past while building the metaverse. The company will work with Howard University, Seoul National University and the University of Hong Kong to study safety, ethics, equity and design concepts for the metaverse.

What are the key tech terms I need to know to understand the metaverse?

Some of these terms are used interchangeably. Some experiences mix the various versions of reality; for instance, Horizon Workrooms require an Oculus Quest 2 headset to join a virtual meeting, but colleagues can also join via video conference.

Data and the policies that protect it: 4 essential plans to have in place

These four sample policies can help you protect your data by ensuring it’s properly encrypted, stored safely, only accessible by certain people, and securely backed up.

Research provided by TechRepublic Premium

Assisted reality: This refers to any technology that allows a person to view a screen and use hands-free controls to interact with it. Realwear devices fit in this category.

Augmented reality: This technology uses the real world as the setting and adds computer-generated images to this view. Retailers use this to show how a new sofa would look in a customer’s living room.

Meatspace: This is the physical world where most of us spend most of our time.

Mixed reality: This term describes a view of the real world with the addition of virtual objects that look and act like real objects. Users can interact with both virtual objects and real ones.

Multiverse: The general definition this term generally refers to many distinct universes operating independently of each other. In a tech/internet/social media context, this is Facebook, Minecraft, Instagram, Twitch, Roblox, Fortnite, Discord and all the other virtual social media and gaming places where people socialize, play and shop. In theory, the metaverse could bring all these multiverses into one place

Virtual reality: This is an immersive experience that requires a headset. There are VR games that take users to different worlds as well as training sessions that are set in the real world.

Is the metaverse the same as virtual reality?

“Calling the metaverse virtual reality is like saying the mobile internet is an app.”

That’s how venture capitalist Matthew Ball explained it during a conversation with Gene Park and Shanon Liao from the Washington Post. Ball wrote a blog post about the metaverse in January 2020 as he saw the “pieces” of the metaverse become more real. In June 2021, Ball expanded his thoughts on the metaverse with a nine-part primer that covers a framework, hardware, networking, computer, virtual platforms, payments, content services and evolving user behaviors.

Ball initially wrote about the metaverse to explain why the last year or so has been a turning point for virtual reality. He saw the worldbuilding of Fortnite and the growing popularity of the game as significant milestones for the metaverse.

“In 2018, you could really start to see that this was not a game, it was something quite different,” he said. “It was taking ideas that had been slowly growing for quite some time and then changing them in a way that feels critically different.”

He compared these developments to the way that the iPhone and the app store represented game-changing moments for the mobile internet. “You could tell that the mobile internet, something that had existed for 15 years, was entering a new phase,” he said. “Fortnite felt a lot like that to me, Roblox was feeling a lot like that to me.”

Ball also mentioned recent comments from Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who tweets frequently about the metaverse. Sweeney had shared code from Unreal from the ’90s to illustrate that people have been thinking about virtual spaces as social spaces for economies for decades.

“His point was that it was only in the last few years that not just have the experiences emerged to bring that to fruition but the core underlying technologies required started to be real and not science fiction,” Ball said in the conversation with the Post.

Ball said it’s a mistake to use inconsistent definitions of the metaverse as proof that the idea is just the latest buzzword.

“If the metaverse were crisply known and codified, it would not be so disruptive,” he said in the conversation with the Washington Post reporters. “Clarity is the antithesis of change.”

Do I need a headset to visit the metaverse?

Ideally, you won’t need a headset in the metaverse at some point in the future when that iteration arrives. In 2021, you need an Oculus Quest 2, a Rift S or a Sony PlayStation VR or a HTC Vive to play virtual reality games. If you need to take a training class in virtual reality or augmented reality, you’ll need Microsoft’s HoloLens or one of Lenovo’s headsets. VRFocus named the Magic Leap the best enterprise solution in its 2020 “Better-Than-Reality Awards” for its spatial computing collaboration package. Magic Leap and VMWare just announced a partnership that includes support for the Workspace ONE XR Hub on Magic Leap 2.

When all the parts and pieces mature, Gil Elbaz, CTO and co-founder of Datagen, predicts that people will want AR glasses instead of a MacBook Pro or even a cell phone. VR devices could replace TVs and computers. “It’s going to turn into one device, we’re just technically not ready for it yet,” he said, adding that it will take three to five years for devices to get to some level of maturity. “It’s a smart investment but it is a long-term investment,” he said.

Facebook’s Reality Labs Research is working to improve the form factor of VR hardware. The team sees wristbands and glasses as interfaces for AR that “won’t force us to choose between interacting with our devices and the world around us.” The lab is also developing a VR headset that makes the user’s eyes visible to other people in the room.

Lenovo’s AR/VR product line includes smartglasses, monocular and binocular devices. The company’s ThinkReality platform includes a software development kit, cloud and device services.

Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3 Smart Glasses have multiple cameras, integrated speakers and microphones, binocular 1080p resolution displays and software that runs voice, object and image recognition, reads barcodes and includes head/gaze tracking. Factory and repair technicians use the devices during training and also to get guidance from experts when working on site.

Is the metaverse relevant to my work?

If you are responsible for training or if you work in the manufacturing sector, you’ll be among the first to work with the building blocks of the metaverse. Nathan Pettyjohn, commercial AR/VR lead of the Lenovo intelligent devices group, said manufacturing is the number one vertical for Lenovo’s AR/VR product line, particularly companies that want their field workers or people in the warehouse to have hands free assistance through augmented reality.

“For an industrial worker who needs their hands free, they can use voice commands to pull up schematics and blueprints without touching the device,” he said.

Lenovo’s Think Reality A3 device is designed for mixed reality experiences, such as a technician using an online tutorial while repairing a machine. The smartglasses provide hands-free operation and can overlay digital objects onto physical ones.

“You can look over at what you’re working on and the digital content stays out of your view, but then you can turn back to the guidance when you need to,” he said.

Lenovo also has a partnership with Realwear, a company that makes an assisted reality device designed for technical work.

“It’s like putting an Android tablet in front of your eye,” he said. “Also, it’s an all-in-one device so you’re not tethered to a compute box or a phone.”

Lenovo’s goal with the ThinkReality platform is to be hardware agnostic for all the company’s AR/VR customers.

“The software platform allows customers to manage Lenovo or third party devices as well as applications and users,” he said.

Pettyjohn has been working with augmented reality and virtual reality for more than 10 years. He is the founder and president of The AR/VR Association, a group with 21 chapters in the U.S., four in Canada, 15 in Europe, seven in Asia, two in the Middle East and one each in Africa, South America, and Australia. The group has weekly online meetings and 22 committees that cover 20 industry verticals ranging from energy and real estate to story-telling and location-based entertainment.

Pettyjohn said that the AR/VR market has the potential to grow to more than $1 billion for Lenovo.

What’s the metaverse connection to hybrid work?

As the debate rages about remote work, hybrid schedules and in-person work, virtual reality and offices in the cloud could be a way to create a common experience for all employees, regardless of where they are physically located. Forrester’s recent report, “Your Virtual Office in the Cloud,” suggests that creating an office in a virtual setting could be an antidote to Zoom fatigue. Benefits could include:

• Replicating the in-person office experience.
• Creating a shared experience and reinforcing corporate values.
• Developing a shared culture.
• Ending the open office plan vs. private office debate.

New and established companies are already trying out this kind of virtual space. Accenture has an Nth floor, a virtual space that connects the company’s 500,000 employees and customers in virtual meeting rooms and event spaces.

eXp Realty is a remote-first company that has about 60,000 agents in 17 countries but no physical headquarters. Instead the company operates in a “cloud-based campus,” doing everything from recruiting agents to holding board meetings in a virtual office.

What companies are building the metaverse?

The metaverse will need a massive technological infrastructure, ranging from compute power to edge computing to 3D imaging to content to finance and commerce systems. And, as the metaverse is seen as the next iteration of the internet, every company that has an internet presence will want to stake a claim in the metaverse as well.

Ball, the venture capitalist interested in the metaverse, also is a co-founder of Ball Metaverse Research Partners, which maintains the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sea is a consumer internet company that includes entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services. Tencent Holdings is a multinational internet company based in China.

Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, Alphabet, Coinbase, Electronic Arts, Samsung, Adobe, Alibaba, Disney, PayPal and Square are also in the fund.

What are real-world use cases of the metaverse?

Training is one of the more common use cases. Entertainment is one of the first industries to offer virtual reality experiences for customers, while manufacturing and healthcare have been among the first to incorporate mixed reality and augmented reality experiences for employees.

Here are a few examples of how companies are using the building blocks of the metaverse today to conduct remote training and create new products and services.

Sports and entertainment

At the game company Unity, Peter Moore is the head of the sports and live entertainment and recently launched Unity Metacast. This platform will mirror professional sports in 3D in real time.

Cameras capture athletes on the field and the data is used to create digital twins. The first 3D broadcast was a match between two mixed martial arts fighters filmed in a small arena with 106 cameras. Moore told the Financial Times that he expects to expand the technology to fewer cameras and bigger playing spaces. Capturing life action and digitizing it immediately could make it easier to create NFTs from memorable moments from games. The NBA’s approach to NFTs–Top Shots cards–could expand to other sports.

Healthcare

Doctors have been one of the first groups to use AR for collaboration. Microsoft’s mixed reality headsets are also enabling medical professionals from around the globe to virtually collaborate during procedures for a 21st century take on surgical operations. Surgeons can operate Microsoft’s HoloLens with hand gestures and voice commands to bring up 3D images from scans, access patient data and contact other specialists. This hands-free control is a significant benefit to the hardware for doctors and other healthcare professionals.

Training

NASA uses AR and VR aboard the space station for remote control of robots or to complete maintenance tasks with an AR assist. In one particular project, astronaut Scott Kelly used a Microsoft HoloLens headset to conduct ISS training and do future mission prep. During these tests, a member of mission control on Earth streamed Kelly’s field of view via the headset and also drew images rendered in 3D on the astronaut’s HoloLens display.

Astronaut Scott Kelly wearing a HoloLens headset on the International Space Station.

Image: NASA

What are the barriers to the growth of the metaverse?

Elbaz of Datagen said it’s still very early days for the metaverse because the software and devices are not ready, VR is still in the early stages of development and AR is not even that far along yet. “We haven’t found a useful application for it internally and we deal with 3D all the time,” he said.

Adam Compton, director of strategy for Schneider Electric, said that gaming and entertainment will continue to be the tip of the spear for virtual experiences. “Early adopters tend to find the easiest path and follow that, and that gets people used to it and then something else comes along for a different application for the same technology,” he said.

Right now learning of all kinds is the most applicable use case for VR, he said. This includes learning how to use or repair a product, how to complete a maintenance procedure, or simply learning a new skill.

“This could be a differentiator for some companies, in that they’re going to sell you this thing, but also going to make sure you are using it right,” he said.

Compton sees the current workforce as one barrier to the metaverse. The metaverse will require extensive compute power, not to mention enough engineers, designers and network admins to keep it running.

“The Wall Street Journal recently wrote that annual job postings for cloud engineers in data centers have gone up 90% in the last year and they can’t fill them,” he said. “Without the human workforce to standardize the infrastructure, engineer it, deploy and maintain it, that will be a big gating factor.”

Another gating factor is a robust edge computing infrastructure. Compton said that the metaverse will benefit from smart city networks.

“Some cities are talking about putting high bandwidth capable microdata centers into public places to make smart city initiatives possible,” he said. “All of these things are coming along now that will help this infrastructure be ready in the future.”

Compton said that using VR now for training, customer care and marketing are good use cases for companies who want to test out the technology now.

Compton said Schneider has used VR to give tours of modern data centers with a 360-degree view of the facility and to create other immersive experiences for customers.

“I don’t think it will break away from fringe usage and specifically entertainment and gaming in the next five years,” he said.

Facebook becomes Meta

At Connect 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was changing Facebook’s name to Meta. He said this reflected the company’s new focus on the next iteration of the mobile internet. Zuckerberg sees interoperability, open standards and contributions from thousands of creators and software developers as the keys to success for this new “place” that really doesn’t exist yet.

The company plans to invest $150 million in a fund to train people to build the metaverse and to subsidize devices that people will use to access the metaverse. Zuckerberg also said that the company plans to invest billions of dollars over the next decade to build the metaverse.

At the event, company executives announced plans for new SDKs for the mixed reality Spark platform as well as Horizon. This is the company’s virtual reality platform that runs on Oculus Quest with options for both Home and Office environments. Zuckerberg also announced that in the near future the company will no longer require users to have a Facebook account to use the Quest.

He made no mention of the latest questions about Facebook’s ethics and business practices. A whistleblower who released thousands of internal documents claims that the company’s own research identified how people can become radicalized on the platform. Numerous news organizations have analyzed the Facebook Papers and found that Zuckerberg is personally involved in many content moderation decisions. This creates two sets of rules and seems to allow some groups and individuals to publish violent content and hate speech that the company claims to ban from the platform.

It’s going to be a huge year for games. Here are all the PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch release dates worth knowing.

L’année dernière n’a pas été terrible pour les jeux, grâce à des moments forts comme Psychonauts 2, Forbidden City et Deathloop, mais ce n’était pas l’année où elle était censée être. Les jeux en cours de développement lorsque la pandémie a frappé ont été interrompus, ce qui a entraîné le report de beaucoup d’entre eux en 2022. Mais ce qui était une mauvaise nouvelle en 2021 est maintenant la bonne fortune de 2022 : cette année semble être un record. Cela commence en janvier avec la sortie de Pokemon Legends : Arceus, et à partir de là, il y a un flux constant de jeux très attendus et potentiellement fantastiques à espérer.

Ce n’est pas une liste exhaustive de tous les jeux qui sortent en 2022, et cela ne tient pas compte des nombreux succès indépendants dormants qui ne manqueront pas de venir, comme Inscryption de 2021. Ce sont tous les grands jeux à venir l’année prochaine que vous devriez connaître.

Mise à jour, 12h12. PT : Cette offre est épuisée. L’histoire originale suit.

Bonne nouvelle, fans de Xbox ! Bien qu’il soit toujours extrêmement difficile de mettre la main sur une Xbox Series X, l’accès aux titres de nouvelle génération est devenu un peu plus facile. Ou du moins plus abordable. En ce moment, chez Woot, vous pouvez vous procurer la Xbox Series S, la plus petite Xbox de nouvelle génération uniquement numérique, en vente pour 20 $ de réduction. Bien qu’il ne s’agisse que d’une remise d’environ 7%, il s’agit de l’une des offres, sinon la première, que nous avons vues sur l’une ou l’autre des nouvelles générations de Xbox. Cette offre n’est valable que jusqu’à 1 h HE (22 h PT) au plus tard, ou jusqu’à épuisement des stocks, alors agissez vite si vous espérez vous procurer une console.

VOIR CHEZ WOOT
La série S est la version allégée de la Xbox Series X plus volumineuse. Bien qu’elle puisse toujours jouer à des titres de nouvelle génération comme Halo: Infinite, elle présente des spécifications différentes par rapport à son homologue pleine grandeur. D’une part, la série S n’a pas de lecteur de disque, donc tous vos jeux devront être des téléchargements numériques. Et à cause de cela, le stockage de 512 Go se remplira assez rapidement, bien que cela soit facilement résolu avec une carte d’extension. Bien qu’il ne prenne pas en charge l’image 4K, il correspond à la fréquence d’images de 120 images par seconde de la série X. Et avec moins de 3 pouces d’épaisseur, il est également beaucoup plus compact. Si vous êtes passionné par votre jeu, cela pourrait en valoir la peine pour attendre les problèmes de stockage et essayer d’attraper une série X, mais si vous cherchez simplement un moyen de profiter de certains de ces jeux de nouvelle génération, la série S est une excellente option pour les joueurs plus occasionnels. le trouver en vente.