Research Tools and Services Discovery

Retail success starts and ends with your sales team. A consistent and positive sales approach keeps the business steady and customers happy. This course is all about building the foundations for success. Instructor Noah Fleming looks at how to deliver and maintain a powerful customer experience, mitigate the factors that impact retail sales, and adopt selling strategies used by the best companies in the world. Find out to increase the average order size with bundling and options, and dive deep into customer loyalty: understanding the true value of a customer. Noah also helps you understand when and when not to discount—and how to avoid the number one retail sales mistake.

Great songs often come to us in bits and pieces. A perfect verse pops into our head like a gift, but we struggle to come up with a chorus or second verse that feels right. In this course, learn practical songwriting techniques that can help you look at your tune through a different lens—and, in turn, take your song to unexpected new places. Professional musician Julian Velard shows how to play with melody, form, and chords to gain a fresh perspective when a tune has you stuck. Along the way, Julian demonstrates each technique by playing musical examples.

Part of virtual reality is generating real-time 3D graphics. This can be done with JavaFX. This course discusses the benefits of JavaFX and then gets you started using it to create graphics. First, learn how to create charts and UI elements. Then, discover how 3D shapes can be defined and generated. Once you have your 3D graphics, you're ready for controlling the camera and lighting. Last, find out how to apply shape materials and then interact with 3D scenes.

Learn how to animate infographics with Adobe After Effects! Many infographic elements begin life in applications like Illustrator, Photoshop, or PowerPoint. But these assets can be flat and boring; animation is what brings them to life. In this course, After Effects guru Ian Robinson covers animating charts and graphs with shape layers, layer masks, and stroke and text animators. He also shows how to use expressions to link animation between different graphic elements, build dynamic camera moves, and create some animated 3D infographics with CINEMA 4D Lite. To finish things off, he'll look at some third-party tools such as Cinema Spice Charts & Graphs for After Effects and aescripts, which help speed up some of the techniques you learned earlier in the course.

In this course, search engine optimization (SEO) expert Peter Kent walks step-by-step through the process of reviewing the content and markup of an existing web site to improve its ranking in search engine results. This course offers a consultant's take on how to analyze each component—from keywords to content to code—and determine what improvements are necessary to become more visible to search engines like Yahoo!, Bing, and Google.

This course was updated on 10/12/2012.

Android developers who need to manage and present data have many tools available to them in the application framework of Android. This course covers a variety of data persistence techniques, including storing data in shared preferences—key-value pairs—in JSON-formatted text files, and in relational databases with SQLite. Join David Gassner as he demonstrates these data management techniques. He also explains how to use relevant design patterns to model data with Java classes, and how to present data to the user with the Android SDK's ListView and RecyclerView components.

GraphQL—a query language for APIs that was originally built by Facebook—helps developers build queryable APIs that drive data-driven apps. In this course, Glenn Block demonstrates how to use the GraphQL.NET framework to build a fully functional GraphQL endpoint. Glenn takes you through the entire process, explaining how to create a new GraphQL project, enable querying, configure the schema, allow updates through mutations, create subscriptions, and more. After completing this course, you'll have a better understanding of how to leverage your existing .NET skills—and the GraphQL.NET framework—to build efficient, modern apps.

Kotlin is now officially supported by Google as an Android development language. If you're an intermediate developer interested in learning more about Kotlin, this course can help you get acquainted with this concise, fun language by learning about its efficiencies and power in Android development. The course begins with a general overview of what Kotlin has to offer, and then dives into a discussion of extension functions and properties, including how to leverage the Kotlin Android Extensions plugin. It also explains how to work with Anko, and provides an overview of some of the library's main artifacts: commons, layouts, and coroutines. To wrap up, the course covers how to work with collections.

Discover the principles and tools companies around the world use to share and record their screens and create engaging elearning content. Get an overview of screencasting and elearning, design considerations for your screen-capture training, and the most popular tools on the market, including Captivate, Articulate Studio, Articulate Storyline, Lectora Inspire, and Camtasia Studio. David Rivers will not only help you capture what's on your screen, but also show you how to add interactivity, heighten visual interest, and build quizzes with each program. Watch now to compare these applications and decide which one is right for you.

Do you want to make your video footage look more vibrant, more accurate, or better fit the mood and themes of your project? Color correction helps you accomplish all these goals and more. In this introductory course, staff author Ashley Kennedy explains the concepts behind color correction and color grading, and guides editors through the process of correcting contrast, color balance, and hue/saturation. She also discusses how to enhance and stylize footage, and provides a "cookbook" of solutions for the most common color-correction problems that editors encounter. The course focuses on using the toolset in Adobe Premiere Pro, but also addresses workflows in other software programs (Avid Media Composer and Final Cut Pro X).

Bring your iOS development skills—and your applications—up to speed with the new options in the iOS 7 SDK, including a new version of Xcode, Xcode 5, and the biggest overhaul to the user interface since the release of the original iPhone. Simon Allardice shows you how to create simpler designs that emphasize the principles of clarity and flexibility in the new UI, and add depth to your apps with translucency and layering. Plus, learn about multitasking, the new Objective-C modules, 64-bit support in the iPhone 5S, and new and updated frameworks for iOS 7.

Handoff is one of many new toolkits introduced in iOS 8 and built into the iOS 9 SDK. Handoff allows Apple's first-party apps and third-party developers to send app data seamlessly between devices so you can "pick up where you left off," whether you resume an activity on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. This short course will help iOS developers understand how to use Handoff to resume an activity on another device. Tammy Coron covers the most common activity types, and reviews the process of defining, creating, updating, and continuing with an activity. The scenarios covered include sharing data between document-based apps and between native apps and web browsers. Tammy also shows how to troubleshoot Handoff interactions. These tutorials include everything you need to use the Handoff toolkit and make your data truly mobile.

Meet Backburner, a network-rendering manager for Autodesk programs such as Maya, 3ds Max, and Toxik. This course introduces you to the basic concepts behind network rendering, a more efficient method of rendering that spreads the workload to servers, one frame at a time. George Maestri will show you how to set your Backburner manager and servers, configure proper network paths, and send jobs to Backburner from Maya.

Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) is a globally recognized certification that validates your ability to audit, control, and monitor information systems. In this course, Michael Lester provides a high-level overview of the CISA certification exam. This course kicks off the CISA Cert Prep series, which covers each exam domain in greater detail. Here, Michael introduces you to the exam, provides exam tips and practice questions, and shares what to do after you've taken the test.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) is the platform of choice for Windows virtualization. RDS provides secure access to corporate data and applications as well as desktop access from the cloud. It's ideal for remote teams as well as companies that don't need computers on site. This course includes guidance for manually deploying RDS in Azure, the Microsoft cloud computing solution. Instructor Sharon Bennett reviews the deployment options—including session-based and virtual desktop deployments—and then reviews the basics of an RDS template deployment. She shows how to configure an environment complete with servers, users, and security. Finally, discover how to test your solution by creating client session collections to run remote apps or desktops.

Planning projects, assigning tasks, tracking progress, and releasing results can all be managed in Jira, the popular and collaborative software for development teams. In this course, Robert Anthony shares his expertise as he guides you through the fundamentals of using Jira. Robert shows you how to create tickets, locate issues assigned to you and others, use advanced search, customize dashboards, run reports, and set up workflow boards to organize work. In addition, he facilitates several challenges and solutions so you can practice what you learn as you follow along.

Millennials—individuals between the ages of 18–35—are the largest buying segment in the economy. In this course, learn what this generation actually values, and how to leverage proven marketing strategies to effectively target this powerful audience. Millennial marketing expert Chelsea Krost kicks off the course by explaining who millennials are and debunking common millennial stereotypes. Chelsea offers specific tactics that you can use to optimize your organization's digital and social presence, and shares strategies for upping your content marketing efforts to inspire and engage consumers. To wrap up, she covers influencer marketing—including how to find the right influencer for your business—and goes over fundamental social media marketing concepts.

No matter your role, seniority level, or industry, work can sometimes get awkward. In this course, Elizabeth and Lisa McLeod help you navigate those tricky situations. Learn the principles and behaviors to employ in a variety of awkward situations, from coworkers who take credit for your work to office breakups. Throughout this practical course, Elizabeth and Lisa share scenarios of common situations and demonstrate how to handle them with grace and authenticity.

Protect your network from cyber attacks. Malcolm Shore shows how to use the latest tools to discourage and combat hackers, phishers, and snoops attempting to infiltrate your Windows and Linux systems. Learn what forms cyber attacks can take, and the two most common types of protection you can build into your system: antivirus protection and firewalls. Then learn how to scan your network for suspicious files, detect intruders with Netcat, and identify vulnerabilities at the host level with Nessus scans. Malcolm also shows how to avoid common security mistakes and monitor packet-level activity on your network.

Do you excel at bringing people together? Turn your passion for event planning into a career. Event planners are employed in every industry. They bring teams together to achieve goals, celebrate milestones, bond outside the office, and work more productively. This course will give you tips, tricks, and techniques to make your next event a success—whether it's your first or fifty-first. Valerie Berry covers topics such as understanding your client's objectives, selecting a venue, getting the right technology in place, negotiating a budget, and building menus. Plus, learn how to manage the thousands of details that occur in the two weeks leading to an event, and follow up afterwards to make sure your clients and your vendors are satisfied.

Take a tour of the latest features and capabilities of the FileMaker 14 platform, a business solution environment for iPad, iPhone, Windows, Mac, and the web. Author Cris Ippolite covers the new Launch Center, the new security interface, new layout and design tools, the Script workspace, Calculation dialog enhancements, and improvements to FileMaker Server, WebDirect, and FileMaker Go.

Get more out of Google's popular cloud-based file sharing and word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, Google Drive. Jess Stratton shows how to optimize Drive for the desktop and improve efficiency and productivity with shortcuts and other techniques, like stars and color coding. The course includes advanced tips for Google Docs, Sheets, and Drawings, as well as best practices for getting the most out of Drive when using it with other Google products such as Chrome, Gmail, and Search.

This course describes how to create editable content on the web using the document-editing application programming interface (API) in HTML5. Author Bill Weinman explains the document-editing process, detecting support for the document-editing API, using the contentEditable and designMode attributes, and editing a full document. The course also explores some of the limitations of the feature and shows how to make document-editing pages work across different browsers.

Mastering the Box2D physics engine included with GameMaker: Studio can open up a wide range of game design possibilities. By leveraging this powerful tool, you can create rules that govern how objects behave within your game world. In this course, learn how to create a simple, runner-style game using the Box2D physics engine built into GameMaker. Steven Moser explains how to set up the physics world for your game, move a player object using only physics functions, and create obstacles such as saws, spikes, and swinging blades. He also provides an introduction to liquid physics in Box2D—explaining how to create particles that behave like water and viscous poison—and shares how to decorate your level by building chains and rope bridges.

Storytelling isn't just for fiction; it's vital to your business, too. Storytelling can help you communicate with customers and clients, market your ideas, and solve problems. It's also a great way to take projects from concept to launch. In this course, author and story consultant C.C. Chapman walks you through his storytelling strategies, including identifying your audience, brainstorming, nailing down details, and turning your story into a reality.