It’s no secret that in a world where technology is a driving force and an integral part of everyday life for everyone big and small, many of us are looking for help and support from none other than mobile apps that would only benefit anyone who needs them.

There are a number of these that could help students prepare for the long and difficult school year, and today we’ve chosen to bring you some of them – from math problem solvers and note-taking tools to book tracking programs and summary apps. And today we’ll share with you the top apps that can be of great use to students in the new school year, presented by TechCrunch.

Top 5 Most Useful Mobile Apps for Students

StoryShots
If you’re the kind of student where time is never enough, even to read a book, you might want to use StoryShots, a free learning app that provides book summaries in text, audio and video format.

StoryShots divides the book into small parts, providing the reader with a few paragraphs that summarize the most important points. The app can be useful for those who want to learn a topic in a timely manner, especially for upcoming exams or an approaching deadline. The app provides infographics, mind maps, presentations and short videos.

Essayist
Essayist is more suitable for students because it helps them in essay writing. The iOS app can automatically apply citation styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and Harvard. Essayist also helps with in-text citation formatting, references, page titles, and cover pages, as well as page settings, such as font, font size, line spacing, alignment, page numbering, and more.

And that’s not all. Essayist has a reference management feature that allows students to include chapters from books, magazines, websites, and even movies. There are more than 25 types of references in total. Users can use Google Scholar to add references or copy and paste a URL.

Photomath
Photomath is an application for solving mathematical problems. Problems are scanned, and the app shows a step-by-step solution to teach students how to solve difficult equations. Users point their camera at a math problem (handwritten on paper or typed) and the app sends the image to cloud servers that analyze and determine the answer. There’s also an in-app calculator if users want to enter the question manually.

Bookly
Bookly is an app that helps track and manage users when they want to set reading goals. Users can set how many books they want to read in a month or a year and how much time they want to spend reading. They can also set an end date goal for each book so that students can more effectively meet deadlines and assignments.

The app has a timer that users can tap to see when they started reading for the day, and a countdown based on their goals. So if a user wants to take 20 minutes a day to read, Bookly will notify them when the time is up.

Peech
Peech is a reader that turns any text file, PDF, book or web article into audio. Did you know about the existence of such an app? The concept of a text-to-speech generator alone is enough to help a student who is overwhelmed with assignments. Moreover, the app can also be useful for people with dyslexia, low vision or other conditions that make reading difficult.

There are many ways to audition content, whether it’s copying and pasting text directly into the app, uploading files, embedding a URL, or even scanning a textbook with your phone’s camera. And the best part is that the app is available in 50 languages.

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And even though it’s Friday today, in this article we’ll discuss why it’s important to pay attention to unproductive days and present some of the best tips and strategies to say goodbye to unproductivity.

How to deal with lack of productivity

Prioritization of at least one task
When you’re experiencing a lack of productivity, you can ensure progress by prioritizing at least one task to complete by the end of the workday. This can help you experience a sense of accomplishment while keeping your goals simple and achievable. From here, you can build momentum to make more progress when you return to work the next day.

Plan a productive tomorrow
After you’ve had an unproductive day, leave work, take a break and create a plan to boost your productivity for tomorrow. This can help you start the next day efficiently and without wasting time organizing your tasks. From here on, you can accomplish more than you originally thought and maintain a calm and efficient attitude.

Optimize your working environment
To move forward after an unproductive day, optimize your working environment so you can make progress. Try to eliminate any opportunity for distractions, including office clutter, text or email notifications, phone calls and interruptions from colleagues. From here, you can concentrate on your work and focus on completing your tasks.

Defining time management strategies
In addition to optimizing your work environment, you can take advantage of time management strategies to bounce back after an unproductive day. Consider creating a workflow schedule that you can follow to organize your tasks efficiently. Additionally, you can use time tracking apps or software to measure the time you spend on specific tasks and set reminders.

Consider work-life balance
Think about why you had an unproductive day and evaluate your work-life balance performance and your personal needs. Many people experience a drop in productivity due to career stress or personal issues. Consider evaluating your current routine or situation to recognize your limitations and set boundaries that improve your ability to focus on work.

According to the report, market and economic conditions are the leading reason for the cuts. Other reasons include cost cutting, restructuring and artificial intelligence. 46 900 people have been laid off this year without companies specifying a reason.

In May alone, U.S. employers laid off 80,089 people. That’s 287% more than in the same month last year, when companies announced 20,712 layoffs. That’s the highest January-to-May job cuts since 2020, when 1,414,828 people were laid off.

The technology sector had the most layoffs this year, followed by the retail sector, the automotive sector and financial firms.

According to Business Insider, this is the first time artificial intelligence has been included as a reason for job cuts. Challenger, Gray & Christmas expects this trend to continue, although some companies are still reluctant to admit they are laying off employees and eliminating positions because of AI.

A recent Goldman Sachs report states that artificial intelligence could replace 300 million full-time jobs globally, which is a quarter of current jobs

It was a difficult period, but…

After ten years of monumental growth, fintech is experiencing its first more difficult period. Having already been hit by the tech downturn, layoffs, the cost-of-living crisis, and the looming recession, the news from the Wall Street Journal that fintech companies underperformed financials and tech stocks in 2022 makes for rather uncomfortable reading, which unfortunately wouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with it.

Vulnerability to high interest rates, the removal of pandemic catalysts and a focus on businesses that are profitable or have a clear path to profitability are some of the reasons for the poor performance of fintech stocks.

Fintech has already changed the business and personal finances of millions of people around the world. Alongside innovations that have improved legacy systems in banks, and B2B technologies that have increased security, privacy and risk for consumers, consider the millions of people with Revolut or Monzo cards in their wallets.

As well, we might consider the companies that have survived thanks to SME funding platforms, or for the merchants using digital payment devices. Fintech is having an even bigger impact in emerging markets through online money transfers, microloans and mobile payments.

According to experts, despite economic difficulties, fintech will continue to attract huge venture funding in 2023.

Fintech companies predispose healthier businesses

Now, more than ever, every dollar counts. Today, fintech companies can add tremendous value in improving companies’ financial back-office functions and run healthier businesses.

Crises create opportunities

More forecasts suggest that the current economic environment will make it difficult for fintech entrepreneurs to raise capital unless they can demonstrate attractiveness. At the same time, crises create opportunities. Entrepreneurs are using technology to help consumers pay their debts more efficiently, get faster mortgage approvals, and access BNPL’s services to manage their personal and/or business finances.
There’s always a chance for proper business

Although fintech stocks are down, there are still significant opportunities for successful businesses. The outliers and risks are those that can succeed in challenging economic conditions, those that create businesses designed for long-term growth and scale.

Technology and software development companies are an essential component of this process. Today, we’ve chosen to introduce you to the top software development trends that business leaders should be watching this year, regardless of their business goals, presented by RST Software.

Top 5 Software Development Trends in 2023

AI goes mainstream

By the end of 2022, powerful AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney have surprised us with their creative potential. The emergence of such tools is slowly changing the debate about both AI and software development. While previously it was mainly focused on the reassurance that the technology posed no risk to the creative work of artists, musicians, writers and even programmers, the global community is beginning to notice these risks. In an article for Forbes, author Nelson Granados warns that the overuse of AI could kill creativity and diversity of thought.

And recently, a news story came out mentioning that creators will seek their rights through legal means due to the excessive interference of AI in their creativity.

Maximum development efficiency

The focus on accelerating software delivery and improving the developer experience is not new, but the coming years will see more efforts to maximize it as a trend in software development. According to Gartner, by 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable application delivery services, components, and tools.

This means software developers will increasingly be able to rely on off-the-shelf components offered by enterprises in addition to open source software.

Proliferation of industrial cloud platforms

Industrial cloud platforms transform cloud computing into business platforms that offer a variety of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS related to a specific industry segment within the platform, where they are typically purchased elsewhere. They are more flexible and relevant and help enterprises adapt their processes and software applications faster. In line with this software development trend, cloud services for the automotive industry or cloud solutions for banking are already available on the market from various providers.

Greater resilience with digital immunity

As the risk of cybercrime increases, methods to protect systems and their users need to be constantly developed. Predictions are that enterprises will continue to use increasingly innovative ways to become more digitally resilient, and these efforts can be seen among the latest trends in software development.

Cyber immunity is being realized through a more comprehensive approach to cybersecurity that combines observability, AI-assisted testing, machine learning, chaos engineering, auto remediation, object reliability engineering, and software supply chain security, all of which are being used to increase the resilience of products, services, and systems.

Real-time observability

Businesses are collecting unprecedented amounts of data and have already learned to use it to their advantage – big data analytics, as well as Business Intelligence practices, are widely used in decision making across all industries. The latest trends in software development show that enterprises are learning to use observable data to further reduce time from action to reaction and make predictions for the future.

Meta’s last quarter showed not only the changes in Apple’s iOS privacy but also made it clear that the platform is no longer an interest for users.

The number of monthly active users did not change since the third quarter of last year. Facebook’s daily active users, however, fell from 1.93 to 1.929 billion for the same period.

The company is counting on its applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp which are also among the most used social platforms.

However, the rebranding from Facebook to Meta may have played its role in the user growth slowdown, especially when the company announced that its new plans are to focus on the metaverse experience.