Introduction:

Engagement is important when learning or exploring any new information and mastering new skills. There is where game-based learning can prove to be pivotal during a student’s learning phase. Game-Based Learning plays a crucial role helps students in learning effectively by making students collaborate, communicate, interact and work in teams during different activities.

The core concept which differentiates game-based learning or gamification from traditional learning is its focus on repetition, failure, and the accomplishment of goals. Game-based learning takes this concept and applies it to teaching a curriculum. Students work towards a goal, have the flexibility to choosing the required actions, and experiencing the consequences of those actions. They are allowed to try again in case of failure which allows students to learn at their own pace. This results in an active form of learning instead of passive learning.

Game development can help take care of important metrics that are pivotal for student engagement such as academic performance, social-emotional learning (SEL), school climate, and attendance. Thus, it is very important to maintain student engagement to ensure a more pragmatic, interactive, and active form of learning.

How Educational games are transforming learning?

The population of urban game players is increasing day by day and the implications of how gamification or game development, when combined with educational technology that can be used for learning, cannot be ignored. Game-based learning can motivate self-learning and problem-solving skills in students to a great extent.

Here are 10 ways of how educational games are transforming learning:

Boosts motivation and self-learning

Due to lack of motivation students from rural or economically lower backgrounds drop out of school every year. Game-based learning can motivate the students to complete their tasks. The concept of a reward system in traditional games can also be used effectively from an educational perspective. In game-based learning, students get to progress instantly as they learn and understand certain concepts practically and begin to implement that learning in their daily lives.

Gives you the choice of what to learn

Game-based education gives students a choice regarding what they want to learn. If the children are made to play a certain game to perform a particular activity forcefully, it will have no learning benefits. If students have the option to choose what they want to learn, they have the curiosity to ask questions and be active during learning rather than being passive and learn more effectively.

Develops non-cognitive skills

In traditional classroom settings, not much attention is paid to building non-cognitive skills like patience, motivation, self-control, and perseverance. In multiplayer games catering to students from various schools, when students are allowed to participate in the activities as a representative of that school, it helps in building their communication, social and other non-cognitive skills.

Brings out collective potential

Traditional learning processes do not focus on understanding the benefits of collective learning and intelligence. Games help in reducing the risk of communal grouping and focus on foster development, interaction, collaboration, and engagement between students of different cultures or countries, thereby promoting collective intelligence and developing social skills.

Allows students to judge their potential

Game-based learning involves a large audience, unlike traditional classrooms which can help students understand where they stand among their peers from all over the world. Learners can challenge each other on various subjects and topics, which will help them to understand their potential level as compared to other people from their country or around the world.

Highly benefits students with special learning needs

Game-based learning is adaptive to new learning techniques and technologies, so students can learn at their own pace. Students with dyslexia or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) whose cognition is perceived as different rather than weak can also learn at their own pace and have a more interactive form of learning due to game-based learning.

Helps in skill development and relearning 

Advanced technologies available, such as AR and VR, can train a person without having a separate skill development program through gamification. Game-based learning can be pivotal in the relearning industry. In certain scenarios, game-based learning combined with other methodologies is more effective than traditional methodologies.

Fulfills Core Psychological Needs

Gamification borrows the ideas and principles from traditional games and applies them to a non-game setting, which, when properly implemented, can help bolster the social dynamics in the classroom. Games fulfill different core psychological needs. Kids love to explore, act freely, and have a sense of challenge, social interaction, consistent feedback, and more. These components are valuable during their school experience and make learning more effective.

Makes learning more Social

Games focus on collaboration and allow a student to interact with another real-life player who is on your team and focuses on navigating situations and problem-solving solutions collaboratively and pragmatically. Brock University researchers found that “video game players, regardless of gender, reported higher levels of family closeness, activity involvement, attachment to school, and positive mental health.”

Improves Academic Performance

A game should not be too easy or too hard as it will demotivate the student to learn. A good game keeps students challenged and engaged in their zone of proximal development. Game-based learning allows for a faster and more pragmatic form of learning, which bolsters the students’ academic performances eventually by catering to a student’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

The post 10 Ways in which Educational Games are Transforming Learning appeared first on [x]cube LABS.

Table of contents

• What is GPT-3?
• How does GPT-3 work?
• How is different from its predecessor GPT-2?
• Why is GPT-3 such a big deal?
• What do the early adopters have to say about it?
• A new breakthrough for artificial intelligence

“This is mind blowing. With GPT-3, I built a layout generator where you just describe any layout you want, and it generates the JSX code for you. W H A T.” The tweet by Sharif Shameem about an experiment he did with GPT-3 left thousands in the technology community astonished- for all the obvious reasons. How is it possible for an AI to write complex computer code from a request in simple English, despite never having been conditioned to write code in the first place – or even comprehend English?

What is GPT-3?

The third generation of OpenAI’s Generative Pretrained Transformer, GPT-3, is a general-purpose language algorithm that uses machine learning to translate text, answer questions and predictively write text. It analyzes a sequence of words, text and other data, then elaborates on those examples to produce entirely original output in the form of an article or an image.

We’re releasing an API for accessing new AI models developed by OpenAI. You can “program” the API in natural language with just a few examples of your task. See how companies are using the API today, or join our waitlist: https://t.co/SvTgaFuTzN pic.twitter.com/uoeeuqpDWR

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) June 11, 2020

How does GPT-3 work?

“By ingesting terabytes and terabytes of data to understand the underlying patterns in how humans communicate,” as shared by Sharif Shameem. GPT-3 processes an enormous data bank of English sentences and extremely powerful computer models called neural nets to identify patterns and determine its own rules of how language functions. GPT-3 possesses 175 billion learning parameters which enable it to perform almost any task it is assigned, making it larger than the second-most powerful language model, Microsoft Corp.’s Turing-NLG algorithm, which has 17 billion learning parameters.

How is it different from its predecessor GPT-2?

In February 2019, OpenAI published their findings and results on their unsupervised language model, GPT-2, which was trained in 40Gb texts and was capable of predicting words in proximity. GPT-2, a transformer-based language applied to self-attention, allowed researchers to generated very convincing and coherent texts. The system, which is a general-purpose language algorithm, used machine learning to translate text, answer questions and predicatively write text. However, it created a controversy because of its ability to create extremely realistic and coherent “fake news” articles based on something as simple as an opening sentence, making it unavailable for the public initially.

Why is GPT-3 such a big deal?

As people still wonder why GPT-3 is so hyped, the answer is simple- it is the largest model trained yet. Its 175 learning parameters are 10 times more than any previous non-sparse language model. For all tasks, GPT-3 is applied without any gradient updates or fine-tuning. It only requires few-shot demonstrations via textual interaction with the model. This giant breakthrough for deep learning and natural language processing has enabled GPT-3 to accomplish all of the following and much more:

• Answer trivia puzzles correctly
• Predict the last word of sentences by recognizing the context of the paragraph
• Select the best ending out of many for a story
• Translate common languages, which was initially difficult for GPT-2
• Apply reasoning involving common sense
• Perform 5 digital arithmetic with accuracy
• Write news articles from a title with human-like essence

A research paper on GPT-3 titles “Language Models are Few-Shot Learners” highlights the results of testing GPT-3 on tasks mentioned above against fine-tuned state-of-the-art models. In most of the tests, GPT-3 performed better than those models at zero-shot configurations.

Reasons enough to create a buzz, isn’t it?

What do the early adopters have to say about it?

Soon after publishing GP-3 research, OpenAI gave select public members access to the model via an API. And since then, we can see a number of samples of text generated by GPT-3 widely on social media- leading to the hype we are sessing currently.

Founders Fund Principal, Delian Asparouhov, shared an excellent example of GPT-3 where he fed the algorithm half of an investment memo he had posted on his company website. He then gave GPT-3 half of an essay on how to run effective board meetings. In both cases, GPT-3 generated coherent and new paragraphs of text that followed the earlier formatting in such a manner that made it almost indistinguishable from the original text.

In another example, GPT-3 successfully showcased its capability to deceive people on almost any topic by writing about itself. Manuel Araoz, CTO, Zeppelin Solutions GmbH, used GPT-3 to create a complicated article about a faux experiment on the Bitcointalk forum by applying a basic prompt as a guideline. The article, “OpenAI’s GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since bitcoin,” details how GPT-3 deceived forum members into believing that its comments were genuine and human-written. Not just that, Araoz also tested GPT-3 in many other ways and made complex texts easier to understand, wrote poems in Spanish in Borges style, wrote music in ABC notation and much more.

A new breakthrough for artificial intelligence

In their mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)-outperform humans at most economically valuable work-benefits to all of humanity, Open AI’s GPT-3 has been a major leap in achieving it by reaching the highest stage of human-like intelligence through ML and NLP. This is backed by experiments conducted by early testers who are left astounded by the results. We can only wonder what the next-gen of their developments can be capable of achieving.

Currently, the latest version of their GPT-3 general-purpose natural language processing model is available in private beta, and OpenAI is providing access to its API by invitation only. There’s still a long waiting list for the paid version, which is expected to be released in the next two months.

The post Open AI’s GPT-3: The Artificial Intelligence Creating all the Buzz appeared first on [x]cube LABS.

Table of contents

• The growth in app development trends: Unprecedented and ongoing
• 10 Mobile application trends to watch out for in 2020
  1. IoT
  2. Instant Apps
  3. AR/VR
  4. Chatbots
  5. BYOD
  6. Apps for foldable devices
  7. Beacons technology
  8. 5G
  9. Blockchain
  10. Low code/no-code development
• Conclusion

The growth in app development trends: unprecedented and ongoing

According to Statista, the number of smartphone users worldwide today surpasses three billion and is forecasted to grow further by several hundred million in the next few years. China, India, and the United States are the countries with the highest number of smartphone users, with each country surpassing the 100 million user mark. With the increasing usage of smartphones, mobile app development trends are also growing and have made it essential for developers to stay updated and relevant.Businesses globally are keeping an eye on the latest trends to reap the maximum advantage and create a stronger, more engaged user-base. While we saw unprecedented growth in app development trends till 2019, this year is set to witness a similar trajectory of growth, with more promising trends. We have listed the top ten among them that businesses and developers must watch out for in 2020.

10 Mobile application trends to watch out for in 2020

1. IoT

   2019 witnessed brands like Amazon and Google leveraging IoT and strengthening the competition by introducing the “Echo” range of devices and “Home voice controller” respectively. The investment of hardware companies like Cisco and Dell in IoT and Google’s move to acquire wearable company Fitbit and its collaboration with Nest, a home security camera manufacturer, further hints at the fast movement of these companies towards IoT technology.

   So far we have seen various use cases of IoT in real-life such as continuous supply chain management in retail, connected homes and savvy healthcare monitoring. We are yet to see more and with the increase in demand for IoT solutions, the demand for IoT-enabled apps will grow simultaneously. Forbes magazine predicts that the IoT market would double by 2021. App developers, therefore, will be looking to develop apps for connected products.

2. Instant Apps

   Unlike native apps, you don’t need to download and install instant apps to run them, they can be accessed via a shared link. Instant apps give you access to limited features or a fundamental features-only version of the app. One of the prime reasons they are gaining traction is app demos. These apps provide a look into an app’s complete version and make it easier for you to decide if it’s useful for you before choosing to download. It has become a better way of reaching out to target audiences and convince them for installation. Another advantage of instant apps is that they are smaller in size when compared to regular apps which reduce the page loading time and bounce rate. Vimeo reported an increased session rate by 130% with instant apps.

   With users continuously demanding a better experience and shorter load times, instant apps are something to look forward to in 2020.

3. AR/VR

   Many eCommerce stores, realtors and apparel brands have integrated AR/VR technologies in their applications- Sephora and IKEA, for instance. This not only enabled them to boost and enhance user experience but also increased conversion rates. New use cases are underway as technological giants like Apple and Google are investing heavily in innovation using AR. This year, Google plans to introduce a new AR feature for Google Maps, which would provide people with directions from their camera phones in real time.

   According to Statista, the augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) market is forecasted to reach 18.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Looking at the growth drivers and potential use cases, we can confirm that this year, AR integration will be one of the significant mobile app development trends that would shape the mobile industry.

4. Chatbots

   Initially, only apps like Facebook, Skype, and Slack used chatbots at large but now we see most of the businesses leveraging chatbots for customer interactions. With nearly 50% of customers preferring self-service chatbots over human representatives, it has become imperative for every major product and service sector business to deploy a chatbot. Till date, there are approximately 2.5 million apps in the Google Play Store and nearly 1.8 million in the Apple App Store. However, there are very few apps that have deployed chatbots to enhance customer experience.

   As per Gartner, chatbot interaction is set to increase from just 20% in 2017 to 93% in 2022. With 80% of enterprises expected to use chatbots by 2020, the integration of chatbots to mobile apps will escalate quickly.

5. BYOD

   Bring Your Own Device is a trend under which companies allow their employees to use their personal smartphones and tablet devices for work. This way, enterprises save the cost of device purchase. This comes with security challenges such as employee frauds and industrial spying but they can be averted by deploying a BYOD app. They can install the app on their personal devices which can have different features and rights.

   According to Insights, BYOD market will reach $367 billion by 2022. Many companies are expected to follow the trend set by large enterprises and build company app for their employees.

6. Apps for foldable devices

   With Samsung coming up with its foldable phones, the operating systems are getting ready to make use of this technology to improve smartphone experiences. Google, in 2018, officially announced the foldable support on Android phones by using its ‘screen continuity’ API. According to Samsung, many android apps such as Amazon prime video, Twitter and Facebook have already been optimized for their Galaxy fold. Video streaming and gaming apps can also reap more benefits from foldable technology by simply increasing their screen size or using the extra space for additional information and controls.

   Since foldable phones are the next big thing of 2020, developers must plan their strategy in a way that their applications are poised to run seamlessly on foldable devices.

7. Beacon technology

   A beacon technology-enabled app on your device shows you where you can have your preferred products, their costs, and other specifications. Beacons utilize BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signals. When your device enters a beacon’s zone, the particular app instantly gets this signal and offers appropriate notifications and instructions for the users. Industries like healthcare, museums, and hotels have already included beacons in their services. After Apple’s iBeacon and Google’s Eddystone, now beacon is a part of both iOS and Android app development.

   Beacon technology has been around for some time now, and 2020 will make its presence even stronger. Beacon-based notifications are increasingly helping many businesses and industries to connect with their customers in a highly contextual manner.

   According to GeoMarketing, by 2020, the number of beacon deployments is expected to reach 400 million globally, thereby generating $56,554M by 2026.

8. 5G

   The introduction of 5G networks will not just strengthen network performance but create a data-intensive environment, facilitating new opportunities. By providing lower latency and speeding up data-sharing by upto 10x , you can automate more core processes and deliver improved applications for capturing and sharing data. 5G services offer an extensive range of opportunities, app developers should design the apps that can handle volumes of data being transmitted without compromising with performance.

   It is anticipated that the transition from 4G services to 5G wireless network will be completed by the end of 2020.

9. Blockchain

   Blockchain technology, launched many years back, became a buzzword in 2018, and it was 2019 when we witnessed its many use cases across various industries. With data breaches and security becoming major challenges for business leaders worldwide, blockchain as a trend is growing fast. A large number of fintech companies have already reaped the benefits from blockchain app development.

   According to Transparency Market research, the blockchain market will reach $20 billion by 2024. This clearly indicates that app developers must get ready to capitalize on this technology.

10. Low code/no-code development

    Businesses looking to have an in-house app development team sometimes lack the resources needed to effectively plan and develop a mobile product.  Low-code or no-code development is increasingly becoming popular among such businesses as it eliminates the need for in-house personnel to have a thorough knowledge of coding. In case of no-code development, they can develop the product with no coding knowledge at all.  These platforms are easy to use; where users can simply drag and drop visual components and compile an app.

    While low-code/no-code development platforms are not here to replace traditional coding, this trend will get a boost in 2020, especially among enterprises where budgets are a constraint.

Conclusion

As the trends change and new technologies evolve, it is important for business leaders to stay abreast of the latest trends and technologies and stand out in the highly competitive mobile app development space. The evolving app development trends would drive the need for enterprise mobile app development services. Make sure you keep up with the technologies and trends we mentioned here and try to implement them as much in your mobile app. You can also leverage the expertise of mobile app development companies such as [x]cube LABS to scale your businesses through mobile applications.

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Industry 4.0 is currently generating tremendous noise and drift for data exchange and automation in manufacturing technologies together with IoT, cloud computing, cognitive computing, and cyber-physical systems. Mobile technology is one of the fundamental driving forces behind Industry 4.0, creating “smart factories” and streamlining manufacturing operations with mobility. While most of them have been slow to adopt the benefits of technology, manufacturers aren’t unaware of the substantial tangible improvements other industries are undergoing with the implementation of mobile technology and organizations are noticing improvements in their divisions. Mobility in manufacturing is bringing intensification across all divisions, optimizing from the shop floor to the warehouse to management. Even IT leaders cannot overlook the hazard of production downtime and competitive benefits of improving productivity using mobile devices and solutions.

The Need for Mobility Solutions in Manufacturing Companies

While global expansion strategy forms the core of the emerging need for mobility solutions in most of the manufacturing companies, it is equally important to meet the ever-growing expectations of consumers and stakeholders in the ecosystem. For example, an automobile manufacturer sold auto spare parts to its partners. As the demand for spare parts increased, they felt the need and launched a mobile app to manage the demand-supply gap. Now consumers can place an order for more spare parts online. This helps them reduce cost and improve productivity in the long way. Therefore, to remain competitive, manufacturers must look out for efficiencies in production and the capacity to deliver a broader mix of customized products. This demands operational processes and production lines to be integrated and flexible to allow fast configuration changes and reduced load times, without compromising on quality or safety.

Adoption of mobility solutions by manufacturing enterprises helps to improve their capacities which manifest in the form of improvement in enterprise processes.

Credit: Ericsson Mobility Report June 2018

81% of Industrial Manufacturing CEOs said that they plan to rely on operational efficiencies to bolster growth via enhanced competitiveness.
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Key Advantages of Mobility Solutions

Data and information play a crucial role in implementing business processes right from marketing to manufacturing. Mobility holds the key to the prospect of managing your business from anywhere at any time. Moreover, it shares real-time updates for decision makers. Mobility also provides information during an emergency and therefore manages the uncertain situations well

Portability – Mobile apps are designed for on the go, anytime usage. The right mobile solution can reduce the need to return to a fixed-point to review checklists, receive information or fulfill orders. For example, tablets allow workers to conduct quality checks, send out alerts for any problems and instantly update job status on an order or machines.

Real-Time Problems / Real-Time Solutions – Instead of anticipating problems and outcomes based on earlier performance and trends, it is critical for organizations to have the ability to figure out an issue while there is time to correct it. Learning about errors, malfunctions or other problems after the fact, could delay progress, whereas the management team and staff can be alerted instantly of issues in real-time. Therefore situational awareness can extend the reaction time and lead to positive outcomes and better customer relationships as well.

Accessibility Increases Worker Productivity – Choosing mobile tablets can lead to better productivity of warehouse workers as people respond well to current technology which is easy to understand. Rather than having to visit the fixed workstation repeatedly, workers can perform tasks on the go. Employees are already embracing mobility in their personal life, therefore the traditional learning curve when introducing innovative technology, systems or processes are reduced to a great extent and will arguably, disappear in a few years’ time.

Precision Monitoring –  With GPS locations in vogue, it allows manufacturing organizations to analyze their logistics and figure out where they are being inefficient or losing time in their freight management duties. Instant updates allow team leaders to check the status of any order at any time, or to find raw materials and goods arriving instantly. For businesses with active on field sales staff(s), the ability to both check inventory and input sales on the go increases efficiency tremendously and can boost customer relationships in the process.

Mobility in the manufacturing industry is trending like other industries and is the reason many companies give mobile devices to their staff and discourage BYOD to avoid risk. However, for the company-owned devices as well, organizations should be extra vigilant for the security of the devices as well as business data. Organizations need to address security concerns and place adequate security measures for mobile device management to prevent data theft and misuse of the devices for personal entertainment which eventually leads to wastage of time and productivity decline.

86% of CEO's say a clear vision of how Digital technologies including Mobile can create competitive advantage is key to the success of their investments.
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Some Operational Benefits of Mobility

• Increases overall productivity
• Ensures cost reduction with increased efficiency
• Real-time monitoring and faster access to critical information
• Facilitates collaboration between people at all levels
• Rapid product development
• Improve RoI
• Increase in sales
• Enhance customer satisfaction
• Manage regulatory compliance

Reduce Time to Market and Achieve Optimal Efficiency

In this increasingly connected world, manufacturing intelligence is the new normal. The choice of connectivity determines the planning, materials, build quality and flexibility of a manufacturer’s digital foundation. This adds to the possibilities and ultimately increases the value it brings to their operations, enabling smarter resource management. It affects which equipment and operations can be connected, how many assets and processes can run simultaneously, and how well it scales beyond one geographical site to achieve optimal efficiency. Mobility is helping with data collection, and manufacturers are applying advanced pattern detection and predictive analytics to simplify steps and eliminate delays by pulling the right levers to get ahead of production cost trends and generate good market speed.

Bottom Line

Mobility is making manufacturers compete in their prospects and customers timeframes while delivering higher value in less time than before. Therefore manufacturers and their suppliers must generate and share vast amounts of digital data about the design, dimensions, quality, and location of components. Additionally, tracking their journey through the factory and beyond is imperative. They must manage complex flows of physical materials and become data managers. Yes, we anticipate a growth in the number of data engineers in the flexible plant to almost double between now and 2030.

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What are Rams’ 10 Principles?

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.

The question of the night was how to adapt these design principles to mobile. How could principles intended for industrial design be applied to touch screens the size of a playing card? How can the designer shape the user experience? As a follow up to the discussion, attended by both developers and designers, we started a reading list of recommended resources, see below. What else would you add? DESIGN BOOKS FOR DEVELOPERS

• Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson
• Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell
• Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

MORE ADVANCED BOOKS ON DESIGN

• Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
• Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockmann
• Meggs’ History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs

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By integrating the new multitasking APIs in iOS 7, the app can keep the content up-to-date. The new service allows your app to update information and download content in the background without draining the battery unnecessarily. The updates can happen at opportunistic times and are intelligently scheduled according to usage, so your app can update content in the background only when your users need it.

With iOS 6 and earlier, when an app goes to the background and is still executing a background task—if the device is then locked—the device will not go into sleep mode. It will be awake until the background task is completed. Whereas in iOS 7, the device will go to sleep shortly afterwards. Background tasks will execute at periodical intervals when the device is awake for any other tasks such as fetch mail, etc.

– New Multitasking API’s with iOS 7
– Background Fetch
– Remote Notifications
– Background Transfer Service

Background Fetch:
With this new API, an application will be able to fetch the new content and keep the content up-to-date so that users can see the new and interesting content when the app is opened without a waiting time.

Steps to enable this feature on the application:

1. Either in the info.plist or in the new Xcode feature capabilities, you can enable the background fetch by adding this key to UIBackgroundModes.
Include “UI Background Modes” key with “fetch” value in info.plist

2. To set a minimum background fetch interval that will allow your app to enable these fetches, just start with:

[app setMinimumBackgroundFetchInterval: UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalMinimum]

We can set UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalMinimum / UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalNever or custom interval in seconds as background fetch interval. By Default it holds UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalNever.

When there is no need to download the content in the background, we need to set UIApplicationBackgroundFetchIntervalNever.

3. To handle the new API/delegate method to download the content. 

(void) application : (UIApplication *)application performFetchWithCompletionHandler:
(void(^) (UIBackgroundFetchResult))completionHandler
{
//fetch the latest content [_contentLoader downloadContentWithCompletionHandler:^
(BOOL didReceiveNewContent)
{
if(didReceiveNewContent)
{
completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNewData);
}
else
{
completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNoData);
}
}
}

Here one thing which is very important to remember after completing the download process—we have to tell iOS that the download is complete by using the “completion handler” in the method above, so that iOS can switch the app to a suspended state.

Remote Notifications:

With this new API, an application will be able to download the content when the app receives the push notification. This will be really very useful for developers—an app can download the push notification related content before the user sees the banner notification.

In addition to this, push notifications can omit the alert key and send it to the app as a silent notification. The app will not show any banner for this, but will be notified with the data availability. The application can load the data content before the next time an app opens to keep the app data up-to-date.

Steps to enable this feature on the application:

1. Either in the info.plist or in the new Xcode feature capabilities you can enable the remote notification by adding this key to UIBackgroundModes.

Include “UI Background Modes” key with “remote-notification” value in info.plist .

2. Set content available flag in push notifications to inform the app of the content available to download.

3. Handle the new API/delegate method to download the content.

- (void) application : (UIApplication *)application didReceiveRemoteNotification:
  (NSDictionary *)userInfo performFetchWithCompletionHandler:(void(^)
  (UIBackgroundFetchResult))completionHandler
 {
 //fetch the latest content
 if(![[userInfo objectForKey:@"content-available"] intValue])
 {
 completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNoData);
 return;
 }
 [_contentLoader downloadContentWithCompletionHandler:^(BOOL didReceiveNewContent){
 if(didReceiveNewContent)
 {
 completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNewData);
 }else
 {
 completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNoData);
 }
 }
 }

Background Transfer Service:

In iOS 6, apps can transfer files while in the foreground or for a few minutes when the app returns to the background. It also could not effectively auto-download content or upload large assets.
iOS 7 provides a service to enqueue downloads and uploads that continue even after an app exits. It is not restricted by time and allows the enqueue of even large data.

Steps to use this feature on the application:

1. Create a background NSURLSession and figure it with NSURLSession configuration. We need to create a download or upload task using NSURLSessionTask with NSURLRequest and then enqueue it on NSURLSession by adding it to it.

2. Handle the new API/delegate method to handle the downloaded content.

- (void) application: (UIApplication *)application performFetchWithCompletionHandler:
  (void(^) (UIBackgroundFetchResult))completionHandler
 {
 //fetch the latest content
 //Create a Configuration Object
 NSURLSessionConfiguration* sessionConfig =
 [NSURLSessionConfiguration defaultSessionConfiguration];
 nsConfig.allowsCellularAccess = YES;

//Create a Session
 NSURLSession *dataDownloadSession = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration: sessionConfig];
 NSURL* fetchURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.google.com"];
 [dataDownloadSession dataTaskWithHTTPGetRequest:fetchURL completionHandler:^
 (NSData* data, NSURLResponse* response, NSError* error)
 {
 NSLog(@"Fetch Completed");
 completionHandler(UIBackgroundFetchResultNewData);

}];
 }

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