Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we explore the concept of alternative data.

Are you on DEV? Did you know that it's open-source, and that it uses Honeybadger? We just launched a new feature to help communities like DEV fix more errors together! Software development is more fun with friends; that's why we've built tons of collaboration features into Honeybadger over the years, making it easier for teams to fix errors. Recently the team at DEV emailed us with a feature request: could we make it easier to involve the broader DEV open source community in the error-fixing process?

Better communication at work is the answer. Ok, maybe not THE answer… but it’s close. Fact is, it’s almost always step number one when addressing persistent issues that hold you back, as well as what helps you move from good to great. Better communication increases understanding, fosters trust, and stands out as the essential ingredient for getting things done. It’s not a silver bullet, it’s silver buckshot.

As reported cases of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continue to rise around the world, many companies are increasingly shifting to using remote work as a way of minimizing exposure for their workforce. But even if some of these companies have been remote-friendly in the past, many organizations are currently struggling to figure out how to shift their operations to becoming entirely remote.

Companies all across the world are responding to the COVID-19 crisis by taking every precaution to limit its impact on the lives of employees and customers. The virus has created a ripple effect impacting everything from a visit to the local grocery store to countless conference cancellations. And the world became aware of this crisis only a little over a month ago. Tech companies have responded by asking, and even requiring, employees to work remotely.

It’s been another brutal week. The coronavirus a.k.a. “Rona” as my teenage daughter and her friends call it, is just making things miserable for everyone. There have been significant impacts on the tech sector, along with oil and gas, finance, travel, hospitality, and many other industries. But there’s always a silver lining when disaster strikes. So let’s start on a positive note: many of us in information worker roles can work from home.

Automation is a powerful tool that can make processes more efficient and less expensive. You may think that automation tools are only accessible by large companies with significant resources. There are some cases when outsourcing complex tasks to professional consultants is the best options, such as website migration by cms2cms.com. However, other tasks can easily and effectively be achieved in-house with the help of automated tools.

So you’re using InfluxDB and Telegraf. Perhaps you’re writing over a million metrics points per second. Perhaps you’ve used Flux to do some data exploration. However, you now find yourself in a little bit of a pickle. You need to process and analyze this large amount of data, and you’d prefer to do that work in your favorite language with your go-to libraries.

Many companies are moving their infrastructure and web applications to the cloud. Along with moving to the cloud, organizations are finding new ways to remain agile and nimble, especially when it comes to software. By utilizing Amazon AWS and Amazon ECS, companies are decoupling their monolithic applications and taking advantage of microservice architecture.

For any business to succeed, it’s important for it to reach users effectively. Almost every business today is online and therefore reaches users through applications. If you run an online business, or if you are a part of such a business, it’s important for you to know what impact your application has on your users. One of the best ways for you to know what impact your application has on the user is through end user monitoring.