Today was crazy! Bhavish Aggarwal just revealed the hyped Ola Electric S1 scooters and here is why I think it is a great product taking a leap into the future 👇

While the company advertised it to have the best in class performance of 0-40kmph in 3 seconds, top speed of 115kmph and a driving range of 190km on a single charge, I was even more excited for the futuristic features they've added to the product.

Two-wheelers have always been a bit of a pain when riding for long distances as you need to hold the throttle at the same position, constantly applying pressure on your wrist. Although this feature has been there in cars for over a century and recently in high-end superbikes, getting this feature to the mass market is really crazy. 

Nothing very fancy in this feature right? We've known it for so long and companies like Bounce have made the ride-sharing experience keyless already with mobile app-based unlock. But, the crazy part is the OLA scooter has proximity sensors that'll sense when you are near and automatically unlocks with a greeting "Hi, Bhavish" and locks itself when you walk away.

Well, now you can party on the roads with a two-wheeler. You don't need to pack your Bluetooth speakers when you're going on a road trip. This also doubles up to provide engine feedback to match the sounds of a real petrol engine.

Just say "Hey OLA!" and the scooter listens to you. This just makes the riding experience completely hassle-free. You can take calls, navigate to a location and play music without even touching anything.

We all love personalization in everything we buy. When you think of what you can personalise in the S1, it's not just the exterior colour but even the instrument cluster can be customised to match your mood - bolt, care, vintage, modern. This is just like changing your phone's theme. You also get options to change how your vehicle sounds when you're driving from a plethora of Indian instruments. Last but not least, widgets like maps, speed, music player etc.,

We all know how the Netflix account is used, right? Each person will have their own taste and want the content to be personalised for them. This is where profiles came into play - one product, multiple users. I think introducing this feature into the OLA scooter was a genius move. Scooters are shared by family members or your friends and having these profiles can come in real handy. You can set max speed limits, geo area and time limits for each profile and worry less.

All these high-end features on a scooter for about 1-1.25L is just insane. Now, with a new OLA electric scooter planned to be manufactured every 2 seconds, this is called a true revolution at scale! 

Why S1 by Ola electric is a great product?

React with its component-based approach has made the life of developers easy by managing separate state and logic for each component and the ability to re-use them when required. But what if you wanted to use a shared state between multiple components or maybe fetch data from an API once and make it available to all the components in your app? That’s when global state management libraries like Redux, MobX, etc., come into play.

With the release of React 16.3, the react community got to experience the new Context API which worked similar to Redux and allowed to manage state in multiple components using Context Object, Provider, and Consumer. However, the context API also came with a catch! Sebastian Markbage from the React team has mentioned that the new Context API was not built and optimized for high-frequency updates but rather for low-frequency updates like theme and user auth management inside your app. You can check out his comment here. Context API also had some limitations with code splitting and the ability to store indefinite values instead of a single value.

Facebook recently launched Recoil, which is a brand new experimental JavaScript state management library that addresses many of the problems larger applications face when using the existing Context API.

Recoil mainly comprises of two things — Atoms and Selectors.

Atoms are units of state. They’re updateable and subscribable: when an atom is updated, each subscribed component is re-rendered with the new value. They can be created at runtime, too. Atoms can be used in place of React local component state. If the same atom is used from multiple components, all those components share their state.

In simpler terms, Atoms are units of state that components can subscribe to.

A selector is a pure function that accepts atoms or other selectors as input. When these upstream atoms or selectors are updated, the selector function will be re-evaluated. Components can subscribe to selectors just like atoms, and will then be re-rendered when the selectors change. Selectors can also be used to calculate derived data that is based on state.

In simpler terms, Selectors transform the atom state either synchronously or asynchronously.

You should probably check out this video from the recent React Europe live stream to get a better understanding of recoil.

Let’s start by creating a demo application with create-react-app which increments the count on the click of a button.

Our application is going to consist of MainComponent.js which receives the count and handleFireClick function as props.

In redux, we start off by creating a basic store that acts like a global state for our application.

In recoil, there is no need to create a separate store. Wow! that’s awesome 🤩.

In redux, we create the desired application state using reducers. Let’s create a simple counterReducer which increments the count by 1.

In recoil, creating a shared state is a straight forward approach using atoms. Each atom can be considered as a single shared piece of state. Now, let’s create an atom for holding our counter state.

In redux, actions are fired using the dispatch method provided by redux. Let’s create a file named actions.js which holds the action for incrementing the count.

In recoil, we fire off actions and modify the existing shared atom state using selectors.

Finally, it’s time to connect the shared state with our MainComponent.js component and to differentiate Redux from Recoil, I’ll be creating two new wrapper components called ReduxExample.js and RecoilExample.js.

In ReduxExample.js, we use useSelector and useDispatch hooks provided by react-redux to get value from store and fire actions to update it.

Bonus: In ReduxExample.js we can also create a class component and wrap the component using connect HOC by redux and pass the shared state, actions as props using mapStateToProps, and mapDispatchToProps respectively.

In RecoilExample.js we can directly use the shared atom state value with useRecoilValue and update our state, as simple as doing a setState but with useRecoilState.

Note: Recoil is based on react hooks and will only work for functional components.

There is just one more step for your app to start working and that’s by wrapping your Example components with HOC components provided by Redux and Recoil.

For the Redux example, we use the Provider from react-redux and pass our ReduxExample.js component as children. Make sure to also supply the store you created in the first step.

Similarly, for Recoil, we wrap the RecoilExample.js component using the RecoilRoot component provided by recoil.

At this point, we have successfully created the shared state and actions to update it using both redux and recoil. Simply run npm run start and check if your code is working.

The main question — Will Recoil replace Redux?

That’s a tough one to answer today (at the time of writing this post) as it is still in the experimental phase but the new library looks promising and there is a high probability that developers will switch to Recoil from Redux shortly.

Why? Recoil lets you create a data-flow graph that flows from atoms (shared state) through selectors (pure functions) and down into your React components without having to deal with store creations and re-render the entire App component tree while the state updates.

So, this was a quick comparison between recoil and redux for a simple increment counter app. You can check the live version of the app here (Redux-vs-Recoil) and source code on Github. It’s just a matter of time Recoil becomes the new standard for managing shared states in your react app and is ready to be used in production applications. Until then give it a shot and follow the community to keep yourself updated with the new releases. If you found this post helpful in understanding the basics of redux-vs-recoil drop me a message in chat on — What features would you love to see in Recoil? I’d love to hear any thoughts on this topic 😋.

Recoil vs Redux | The Ultimate React State Management Face-Off

Today online review sites have become the most powerful form of word-of-mouth advertising. Listing your company or service offering in B2B services review platforms can significantly increase your acquisition rates as they host verified reviews of business-to-business services providers to help find reputable services providers such as SEO consultants, web, and mobile app designers & developers, etc. These platforms often issue a free badge that you can display on your website with a link to your business profile on their platform. If your company is featured in their top companies list, you get a special badge for that too. So, what's special about these badges?

A trust badge from a top B2B Services Review Platform ensures your visitors that your company is legitimate and is accredited with the correct bodies or regulators. 

There are a ton of free badges online but it’s very important to use the right trust badges - ones that people recognize. So let's dive in to see the top 15 Trust badges from B2B Services Review Platforms in 2020.

GoodFirms is a full-fledged research and review platform that helps software buyers and service seekers to opt for the best software or firm. At the same time, it helps IT companies and software vendors to boost user acquisition stats, market share, and brand awareness. GoodFirms, just as the name suggests, is a dedicated community of “performing” IT companies as well as software solutions.

Clutch is a B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC. They connect small and mid-market businesses with best-fit marketing, advertising, design, development, and IT companies, consultants, or software. Their methodology considers verified feedback from client references, services offered, work quality, and market presence to compare and rank companies in a specific market.

You can check out their widget and badges offerings here.

Business of Apps is the leading media and information brand for the app industry and provides world-class news, analysis, data & marketplaces for app businesses. They host comprehensive B2B directories and marketplaces covering app ad platforms, app development, app marketing, influencers, and other specialist areas.

Some Interesting stats of businessofapps.com:

UpCity is dedicated to helping our partners in our marketplace grow their businesses by providing the support and help they need to build their online recommendability. For businesses seeking services, the transparency and trust they provide through reviews and data-driven insights help dramatically improve the B2B partner selection and purchase experience.

AppFutura is a platform connecting buyers and service providers in the fields of app development, custom software development, and digital marketing. Their directories, created with a unique methodology, allow buyers to browse through thousands of companies listed and categorize them as per the needs of their projects.

SoftwareWorld is a software review platform that showcases top software solutions suitable for various industries, providing a comprehensive review service by comparing the best software solutions available on the market. The platform creates unbiased lists of the top software solutions by category, helping businesses find the right solution for them.

Some Interesting stats of softwareworld.co:

DesignRush Is A B2B Marketplace Connecting Brands With Agencies and acts as your guide to finding the best professional agencies, categorized by their areas of expertise. They analyzed and ranked hundreds of agencies to help brands find top full-service agencies, web design companies, digital marketing firms & top technology companies.

Some Interesting stats of designrush.com:

TopDevelopers.co is a dedicated directory of IT service providers. The list of IT companies is graded through discreet research and analysis on various industry-specific metrics to help the businesses in finding a reliable technical partner. Their verified reviews will also help you find the best partner to technically accelerate your business.

Some Interesting stats of topdevelopers.co:

Extract.co examines software companies and digital agencies with key industry metrics, discover their reputation and quality standards and reveal the best effective companies. They help in understanding which services deliver well or which industry is more focused or what technologies the company/team is more effective at. They also do well research on previous customer experience before awarding a project to a new company.

TechImply is an IT Firm recommendation platform for all IT companies & technology vendors. More than 10,000 potential buyers use TechImply to find the right business software and IT Firms. You can easily get started on TechImply by creating your company/software profile.

Ascertain the topmost Web Development, Mobile App Development, Software Development & eCommerce Development firms across the globe. ItFirms leave no stone unturned to let you discover some of the renowned firms that will coincide with your needs and delivers high-quality services. Keeping abreast of the latest statistics and data, they provide 100%true and trusted insights on top IT companies and trends worldwide.

15 Trust badges from top B2B Services Review Platforms in 2020

Are you happy in life? I wish there was a metric we can look at and say that we're x% happy in life but we know there can't be one. Why? Simply because people think about their happiness, and it is a very subjective one that can't be generalised to a wider audience.

So how do we answer this question? Yesterday I came across a framework that originated from Japan called the "𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐢" - which translates to "purpose of life". Everything that you do in life is broadly classified into 𝟰 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀.

❤️ 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁

For example, you love travelling and meeting new people. You do this because you get pleasure & satisfaction out of it.

🏆 𝗬𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁

For example, you can be good at coding due to your experience in tech and practice. You do this because you've mastered a skill and perform better than others in it.

💰 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝘁

For example, the job that you do or anything that helps you pay the bills. Basically, these are the things that earn you money. 

🌎 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝘁

For example, showing love and compassion towards animals or donating to a cause. You do this so that others around you are happy and you win as a whole.

When you are in a stage of life where you are doing things that check off all the above four, that means you've found your "𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐢" i.e., the purpose of your life.

I've always felt something missing from my life but didn't know how to fulfil it. At least now, when I see the world through the lens of ikigai, I know what quadrants I should be chasing after & focus to find the purpose of my life and live happily.

#ikigai #lifeadvice #lifeandhealth #happinesss

Are you happy in life?

You do something because...