Parcel shipping costs have been rising since 2020.  We’ve all seen inflation on the consumer end, whether we’re checking out online or paying at the gas pump.  And skyrocketing freight rates have made headlines.  Today, we’re going to focus on the impact of the increasing cost of shipping on your business and what you can do about it.   But don’t lose hope—while we’re going to explore climbing shipment costs in this article, we’ll also chat about what your business can do to make shipping more efficient. 

Parcel shipping costs have been rising since 2020. Find out some ways you can save yourself and your company time and money. Read about it now!

Rising Parcel Shipping Costs in 2022: How to Cut Your Shipping Expenses

It’s November, and online shopping is ramping up to its climactic end-of-year blitz.  www. blackfriday. com estimates that between Thanksgiving and Black Friday of this year, consumers will spend approximately $13 billion 1.   That’s great news for your business.  But if you don’t have the right tools in place to help you meet that demand, you might be left wishing you had better prepare.   Staffing may be one issue for many businesses.  According to the US Chamber of Commerce, the wholesale and retail trade industry has experienced the second-highest quit rate of all industries since November 20202. 

With our ability to validate addresses, Smarty can help you reduce costs, increase revenue, and keep your customers happy. Check it out now!

How to Clean Address Data For the Holiday Rush

We brought out the big guns in the way of our Development Team Lead, Kent Gividen, in a webinar all about authenticating your APIs.  He went over some of his most useful tips and tricks that he uses to ensure APIs are authenticated.  Was it helpful? You betcha.  You wanna get the sparknotes? Read on.   Common and Not-So-Common APIs to Know About  Kent began by outlining the APIs that he has run into the most in his years as a developer.  Some of them he dug into a little deeper than others, but these are all useful to be aware of. 

In this webinar breakdown, you'll learn some of the most useful tips and tricks to ensure your APIs are authenticated. Read about it for yourself!

Helpful Hints to Authenticating Your APIs

October 30, 2022 - PROVO, UTAH - Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, has been named in the Salt Lake Tribune as a top workplace for 2022.  A total of 155 businesses were recognized.  Smarty ranked 17th of the 76 companies with fewer than 150 employees.  The list is based entirely on employee feedback surveys administered by a third-party service.  The anonymous survey measures 15 cultural driving elements like alignment, execution, and connection.    In contrast to the record-breaking volume of resignations in the tech industry, Smarty’s year-over-year employee retention remains above 93%. 

Smarty loves its employees. Amazing culture, trips, lunches, and more fun than you can imagine make Smarty an amazing workplace. Check it out for yourself!

Smarty Named Among Utah's 2022 Top Workplace by Salt Lake Tribune

Tis the season to know “it’s coming from inside the house” but you still stay in the house.  It’s the time of year when teenagers are alone in their convertible at makeout peak while there’s a monster on the loose.  The air is getting chilly, the leaves are falling, and people are moving into known haunted houses without a care in the world.    So it just makes sense that we should look at some address data.   There are some extremely famous addresses (or at least streets) in the “scary movie” genre. 

Every wonder about whether you are close to one of those classic streets from your favorite horror movie? Stay safe this Halloween and avoid these roads!

America's Spookiest Streets

New Feature: Log into Smarty with Your Google Account You've asked for it, and now you’ve got it.  The next time you log into your Smarty account, you’ll see the option to log in to Smarty using your Google account.    Merge an Existing Smarty Account with Google Merging your account with your Google account will not affect your available lookups, security keys, or any other part of your Smarty account.  Merging your Smarty account will:   * Increase security by reducing the number of managed passwords and how often you have to enter your password. 

You asked for it, and now you’ve got it. The next time you log into your Smarty account, try merging your Google account. Check it out now!

New Feature: Log into Smarty with Your Google Account

October 6, 2022 - PROVO, UTAH Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, was named in the 2022 UV50 as one of the Fastest-Growing Companies in Utah Valley.  Smarty ranked 22 on the annual list by business Magazine with a 3-year growth rate of 142 percent.  Organizations like FedEx, NASA, Microsoft, DHL, and businesses of all sizes rely on Smarty’s address verification, autocomplete, geocoding, and enrichment for over 240 countries & territories.  In 2022, Smarty surpassed 2 trillion total addresses processed and 2. 

Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, was named the 22nd fastest-growing company in the 2022 UV50 Fastest-Growing Companies in Utah Valley.

Smarty Named Among Fastest-Growing Companies in Utah Valley by BusinessQ

Did you know that every address has loads of hidden data buried in its metadata? In this webinar, we briefly considered the value of breaking an address into its component parts.  Then we looked at the different metadata available and provided definitions for each one.  And finally, we went over use cases and ideas on how to leverage metadata for improved operations, business intelligence, and financial performance.    There’s gold in your address metadata!  Every address contains basic components that are standardized by country. 

Webinar Recap: Did you know that every address has loads of hidden data buried in it’s metadata? In this webinar, we briefly considered the value of breaking an address into its component parts.

Unlock Value in Your Address Database with Metadata

When considering business software tools for Customer Relation Management (CRM), Business Intelligence (BI), Geocoding, Address Validation, and more, most organizations are either looking specifically for on-premise options, cloud options, or they’re still debating between the two.  On-premise and cloud have been dueling each other for many years.   However, a new challenger has entered the ring: hybrid cloud.   What Is Hybrid Cloud?  A hybrid cloud environment uses a mix of on-premises infrastructure, private cloud services, and public cloud services—such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, or Google. 

We created an executive guide that walks you through the 6 key factors between cloud and on-premise strengths software. Read now.

What Is Hybrid Cloud and Is It Better Than On-Premise or Cloud Software?

As you're evaluating potential new business software for your organization, inevitably, someone will bring up cost.  Your purchasing department will likely want to know if moving to the cloud is cheaper than on-premise solutions, or vice versa.  "Money doesn't grow on trees," they might remind you.    To truly compare cloud vs on-premise costs, you should first calculate the **total cost of ownership or TCO.  The TCO is a financial estimate created to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect lifetime costs of a product or service. 

The total cost of ownership of an on-premise system includes the upfront equipment costs, plus future maintenance and operating costs. Is cloud cheaper?

How to Determine Total Cost of Ownership of On-Premise Vs Cloud Software

A plethora of inspirational quotes float around the internet and office lobbies about how "Wise men don't blindly follow rules, they use them as guidelines" or "Making up your own rules is the trick to success. "  That's great for a motivational speech, but for industries like healthcare, insurance, banking, and others, the rules are very important.  These are some of the most regulated industries in the United States; organizations in these industries must comply with strict rules and regulations from the government. 

An on-premise solution gives you more control of compliance, but choosing a cloud vendor that's already certified to meet regulations can ease your mind.

Compliance Considerations for On-Premise and Cloud Software

No matter the industry, data security is, and always will be, paramount.  Data breaches can cause significant loss of revenue and customer trust.   No doubt you remember the 2017 Equifax data breach.  This breach affected 148 million records, including social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and in some cases driver's license numbers and credit card information.  Equifax paid out $700 million in damages to help people affected by the data breach, and suffered through reputational damage and congressional inquiries. 

Compare cloud and on-premise security, reliability, and uptime. Cloud and on-premise solutions both offer safe data storage.

Which Is More Secure and Reliable—On-Premise or Cloud Software?

Since the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe in early 2020, organizations have realized that being successful in the digital age requires agility not just in software development and delivery, but also in business strategy and operational execution.   Achieving agility in your business's actions and reactions requires a culture of continuous improvement—and the right software to support those actions!  Every company relies on a network of complex systems and software, including Customer Relation Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Intelligence (BI), Geocoding, Address Validation, and more. 

On-premise servers give you complete control of data and hardware, while cloud services are agile, offering scalability and on-demand infrastructure.

How On-Premise and Cloud Software Compare for Control and Agility

With innumerable formats and unfamiliar spellings, standardizing and validating global address datasets can be a real pain.  But it doesn't have to be.   International Address Validation is an essential part of virtually every business that works with international address data.  But how can you keep your address data in multiple countries accurate while not wasting your time and money?  In our recent webinar, Jeffrey Duncan went over the details of international address validation.  You can view the recording below, or continue reading for the quick recap. 

Webinar Recap: International Address Validation is essential for businesses working with addresses worldwide. We'll show you how to keep global data clean.

Why Do I Need International Address Validation?

One of the biggest questions in IT infrastructure planning is whether to go with on-premise or cloud software solutions.  Each type of software comes with its own pros and cons.    To help organizations choose the software that best fits their needs, we created an executive guide that walks you through 6 key factors and breaks down cloud and on-premise strengths and weaknesses for each factor.    Download it here to learn about all 6 factors or read on for an overview of on-premise versus cloud software deployment speed and complexity. 

Differences in Deployment Speed & Complexity of On-Premise Vs Cloud Software

QGIS is an open-source GIS (geographical information system) platform that helps millions of users throughout the world map, visualize,and share geographic information.  Use cases range anywhere from mapping water usage to selecting new retail store locations.  It's a highly capable tool for GIS professionals, and it's free.   Because QGIS is open source, individuals and organizations are free to build and offer plugins to help users accomplish specialized tasks.  This extensive library of plugins offers users a wide range of tools that allow them to build maps for very specific needs. 

WEBINAR RECAP: In this recording, Smarty's Caroline Hickey and Savannah Ryan demo how to implement this highly accurate and easy-to-use US QGIS geocoding plugin.

New QGIS Geocoding Plugin: Rooftop-Accurate Geocoding for US Addresses

Companies purchase national master address lists to use in many ways for many reasons.    Though some might assume the only reason to purchase a national address list is to blanket-mail or ship things to people not already in a company’s database, the lists are extensively used for asset location tracking, resource planning, market intelligence, operations optimization, business strategy, and decision making.   Let’s take a closer look at the first non-mailing use case: asset location tracking. 

Get a simple explanation of how companies use master address lists with persistent unique identifiers to improve asset tracking. 3-minute read. Learn here.

Using A Master Address List to Improve Asset Tracking

There are two types of frequent errors: 401 "Authentication Required" errors, and 402 "Payment Required" errors.    Status Code 401 - Authentication Required  If you're seeing this error there's a chance that there's an issue with your API key, there's a mistake inside your client-side request, or a mistake in the server-side request.  In the recording Lyle dives deep into each of these, but here are the basics.   How to Authenticate API Requests  It is important that you are familiar with your API keys. 

WEBINAR RECAP: While our documentation and tutorials are solid as Chris Hemsworth's abs, there are still some common API mistakes our support team has run into when helping our customers. In a recent webinar, our Support Team Lead Lyle Durland went over a few of those common mistakes and outlined what you need to know so that you never run into API problems again. Probably.

Common Mistakes When Calling Smarty APIs

Are you looking to use an API to verify addresses and convert them to latitude and longitude coordinates?  Maybe you also need to standardize addresses in order to de-duplicate records across millions of addresses in your database too.  That's right, we're talking about validating, standardizing, and bulk-processing geocodes with a geocoding API.   There are several options out there, so let us tell you how *speed* sets Smarty apart from the rest.   Smarty is fast.  Now, we're not just talking about fast like Usain Bolt. 

What is the hardest part of processing loads of data? Finding a way to do it fast. Luckily, Smarty is able to process millions of addresses per minute!

Our Fast Processing Speeds

Improving address form completion rates—whether in a shopping cart, request for quote, or other form—can be a sinch if you’re using an address autocomplete tool.  Not sure what that is? When you see an address line on a form and think “oh shoot this is going to take a minute” and then it fills it in after only a few keystrokes, that’s address autocomplete.   And no, not all address autocomplete tools are created equal.   Some check against their own address database only that is not frequently maintained. 

WEBINAR RECAP: We hosted a webinar talking about Smarty’s US Autocomplete Pro API and how it differs from other autocomplete tools in reliability, accuracy, & customizability.

An Advanced Look at US Autocomplete Pro API

Smarty Unveils Unmatched QGIS Geocoding Accuracy with Release of Geocoding Plugin - US Address  PROVO, UT - June 21, 2022 - Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, announces today the release of their QGIS Geocoding Plugin for US Addresses to provide an easy way for users of the popular GIS software platform to validate, standardize, and convert addresses to their latitude and longitude coordinates (geocodes).  The plugin allows manual address entry as well as batch geocoding via CSV.   Millions of people worldwide use QGIS to map, visualize, and share geographic information. 

Smarty announces new rooftop accurate QGIS Geocoding Plugin to validate, standardize, and geocode US addresses.

Smarty Unveils High-Accuracy QGIS Geocoding Plugin

In our eBook, 8 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Geocoding API, we break down the key features to look for in a geocoding provider and what questions you should ask vendors so you know you’re choosing the solution that will work best for your business.   In this article, we dive into whether you should look for a geocoding provider that also offers address autocomplete and reverse geocoding.    Validated Address Autocomplete  Address autocomplete is a form feature that pre-populates address information to users as they’re typing an address into a form. 

Address autocomplete and reverse geocoding improve the quality and quantity of data you receive. More data with fewer errors leads to better geocodes.

How Autocomplete and Reverse Geocoding Improve Your Geocodes

JUNE 7, 2022 - PROVO, UTAH - Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence announces the release of its new US Master Address List, a comprehensive dataset of 193 million standardized and verified primary and secondary addresses that are all deliverable by the USPS.  With new construction, the list will soon top 200 million.    The Smarty US Master Address List is the most complete and accurate list of mailable US addresses available.  Additional data points like whether the delivery point is residential or commercial, parent addresses and associated apartments or suites, shared delivery points, ZIP+4 Codes, and FIPS Codes all provide valuable business insights. 

Smarty's new US Master Address List is the most comprehensive dataset of standardized, validated, and mailable US addresses available.

Smarty Releases 193 Million Addresses in New US Address List

On-premise vs.  the cloud is a constant debate when it comes to software purchases.  Geocoding software is no different.  How your geocoding solution is deployed can greatly impact both the performance and the cost.   In our eBook, 8 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Geocoding API, we talk about the pros and cons of on-premise and cloud-based geocoding options, as well as other key features to consider.   In this article, we’ll summarize why on-premise versus cloud-based matters, and touch on another deciding factor for your API purchase: third-party basemaps. 

On-premise geocoding used to be the clear choice. With new technology, some cloud geocoders are surpassing local installs for speed, security, and price.

Cloud Geocoding APIs vs On-Premise Pros and Cons

The right geocoding API can help your business reduce costs and increase profits through accurate location data.  But how do you know if a service can handle your data needs? Capacity and speed are two key topics to consider when comparing geocoding services.   You can find out more about all the questions you need to ask in our eBook, 8 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Geocoding API by clicking the link here:       API Capacity and Speed: What You Need To Know  The higher the capacity and faster your geocoding API works, the faster you can utilize that address data and make money. 

How fast is your geocoder? Some APIs hit 27 geocodes per second, others achieve 100,000+. Evaluate before committing to save time, cut costs, and improve data.

Evaluating Geocoding API Capacity and Speed

In this webinar, our geocoding and address expert Adam Charlton went over the ins and outs of address data.  He gave details about address components and how they influence the way an address is composed.  He also dove into the difference between ZIP9 and ZIP11, what a non-postal is, and other address hacks you didn’t learn in primary school.    Standardization and Validation What exactly is a valid address? There are lots of different definitions depending on what your goal is with the address. 

WEBINAR RECAP: In this webinar recap, we’re going over the ins and outs of address data. Learn about address components, ZIP9, ZIP11, non-postals, and other address hacks.

Address Data Masterclass Webinar Recap

If you’ve made it to this blog, you’re clearly interested in taking advantage of location data and geocodes.  Welcome to the club—we’re so happy to have you!  Not all geocoding APIs offer the same levels of service and accuracy.  That’s why we wrote an eBook all about how to choose the right geocoding provider.  In this article, we’ll summarize two points from the eBook: How are no-matches handled and are sub-address geocodes offered?   How Are No-Matches Handled?  First things first—what do we mean by “no-match?” A no-match is the result when a geocoding service can’t find a match for the address you entered. 

Not all geocoding APIs offer the same levels of service and accuracy. Learn how proper no-match handling and apartment geocoding provide a competitive edge.

How No-Matches & Apartment Geocodes Improve Location Data

Geocoding can unlock valuable business intelligence that is hiding in your address data.  But how do you know what level of geocoding you would benefit from the most? Do you need rooftop data? Or maybe you just need parcel data? What about ZIP 9 geocodes?  These are the questions Adam Charlton, one of Smarty's genius geocoding developers, set out to answer in his recent webinar.    What Is Geocoding?  Geocoding most typically means appending a latitude and longitude to a named location like an address. 

In his webinar, Adam Charlton of Smarty discusses the different levels of geocoding and how to identify which will be most beneficial for you.

How to Identify the Right Level of Geocoding

Choosing the right geocoding service is the first step toward unlocking better location intelligence and helping your organization make more strategic decisions.   From our eBook, we’ll cover two key questions to ask when choosing a geocoding API:   1.  Does the API include address validation 2.  How accurate are the geocodes?   Question 1: Does The Geocoding API Include Address Validation?  Fitness advocates are fond of saying things like “Abs are made in the kitchen” and “Fuel your body for success. 

Ask these two questions when choosing a geocoding API: Does the API include address validation and how accurate are the geocodes? Download the full eBook free.

Why Validation & Accuracy Matter for Geocoding APIs

This is part 2 of a 2 part series.  You can read part 1 here.    Anne: Several of you are involved as Diversity and Equity Mentors for the Computer Science Department at BYU (Brigham Young University), can you tell us a bit about that?  Savannah: I’m the lead mentor for the Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Mentors at BYU and it’s really awesome.  We used to be called the Women’s Initiative’s Mentors, so we focus primarily on women because it is the largest minority group in computer science.  But when COVID-19 hit, we broadened our initiatives to include our LGBTQ+ and international students. 

In part 2 of this 2 part series, the women in code at Smarty discuss initiatives for increasing opportunities in school, groups, and influencing future generations.

Women or Femme in Code: Expanding Opportunity Q&A Part 2

This is part 1 of a 2 part series.  You can read part 2 here.   This edition of our blog comes from a special guest writer, Anne Arnold, daughter of Smarty’s own Wes Arnold.  Anne will soon graduate high school and as part of her career exploration, she had the opportunity to sit down with the women on Smarty’s software development team.   They each  shared how they discovered their love for coding, what it’s like to be the only woman in class, and how they’re helping spread the opportunities for prospective women in code like Anne. 

A 2021 StackOverflow survey shows that women account for only 5.31% of software developers worldwide. In this 2 part Q&A, 7 women in software engineering at Smarty discuss their efforts and share tips about increasing opportunities in the software development field.

Women or Femme in Code: Expanding Opportunity Q&A Part 1

Have you ever tried to add a minor feature to your application only to discover that you’ll have to re-write large blocks of code first? Or maybe you’ve spent hours deciphering hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of lines of existing code just to find out a task only required two lines of additional code.  If you’re like most developers, you’ve wasted countless, frustrating hours wading through immensely complicated code trying to force it to do things it wasn’t built for.   In his presentation, Mike Manwill, Frontend Team Lead here at Smarty, discussed 5 principles to help you create stupidly-simple applications that are maintainable, extendable, and bug-resistant. 

The smarter an application is, the dumber its code should be. Make your code maintainable, extendable, and bug-resistant.

5 Principles For Creating Stupidly Brilliant JavaScript Applications

Many businesses now collect data online.  One could argue that it is nearly impossible to succeed in modern business without some sort of online portal in which there is an exchange of information between the provider and the customer.   But how do you ensure that the information being input by the customer (or potential customer) is accurate?  While there is no way to ensure that Bobby Duncan doesn’t put “Sammy Sosa” in the name line on a form, there IS a way to ensure that he’s putting in a valid mailing address for you to mail his package to. 

Get clean address data from the very beginning by using this popular API to fill in address information.

Setting Up US Address Autocomplete API to Autofill Your Forms

For address validation, an international address lookup is the process of matching foreign addresses against the local authoritative postal databases to ensure they are real and mailable.   The process commonly corrects typos, parses the addresses into its component parts and standardizes it to match countries' approved formats.   The task of looking up and combining data sets for thousands, or even millions of international addresses is a daunting one.  Just trying to keep track of each country’s valid address format alone, is a time-consuming challenge. 

Lookup international addresses with Smarty suite of international address validation APIs to keep your global physical and mailing address data clean.

International Address Lookup: 3 Steps To Cleaner Data

PROVO, UT - SmartyStreets, a leader in location data intelligence, announces today a comprehensive rebrand to Smarty.  The new branding is a reflection of the rapidly growing spectrum of forthcoming products related to location data intelligence.     Founded in 2011, SmartyStreets began with a simple mission to offer smart street address validation software for the United States.  Focusing on street data made the name ‘SmartyStreets’ a logical fit.  Subsequent product releases in the fields of geocoding, reverse geocoding, and address autocomplete began to move SmartyStreets from just street data into the broader category of location data intelligence. 

The new Smarty branding is a reflection of a rapidly growing spectrum of forthcoming products related to location data intelligence.

SmartyStreets Announces Rebrand to Smarty - Early 2022

Provo, UT - Smarty (formerly SmartyStreets), a leader in location data intelligence, is pleased to announce the release of International Address Autocomplete to help companies better serve their global customers and users.    Smarty International Address Autocomplete predicts global addresses in real time while users complete forms with address fields.  Whether companies use address forms for customers on a website or for employees via internal applications, International Address Autocomplete streamlines the data-entry process through predictive analytics while the user types. 

Smarty announces the release of International Address Autocomplete to help companies better serve their global customers and users.

Better UX with International Address Autocomplete

We get a lot of questions about USPS CASS certification and how it differs from NCOALink certification.  They are both methods of address validation that originate with the USPS.  While they look the same and smell the same (probably), they are in fact, very different.  Even still, these methods are frequently confused, conflated and equated.  So, we decided to cut the confusion and answer all your burning questions about CASS and NCOALink.   Here is some of stuff that future you (who has read the article) already knows:  *   When you notify the USPS that your address has changed, NCOALink only hangs onto those updates for 4 years. 

We get a lot of questions about USPS CASS certification and how it differs from NCOALink certification. So, we published a new article to teach all about it.

Cass vs. NCOALink Certification Article Now Live

Provo, UT - Smarty (formerly SmartyStreets), a leader in location data intelligence, is pleased to announce entering into name, image, and likeness (NIL) agreements with all female student-athletes at BYU that could surpass $2,000,000 in benefits paid to the athletes.    At a special event held on Tuesday, September 21, Jonathan Oliver, Founder and CEO of Smarty, extended this opportunity to all student-athletes on BYU female sports teams.   This is the first opportunity presented to all female student-athletes since the NCAA rules changes went into effect in July. 

Smarty announces entering into name, image, and likeness (NIL) agreements with all female student-athletes at BYU that could surpass $2,000,000 in benefits.

Smarty inks deal with all BYU female student-athletes

The difference between a physical address and a mailing address is that a physical address is where you are geographically located and a mailing address is where you get your mail.  Often a physical address and a mailing address are the same—but not always! Whether you&#39;re trying to mail important account paperwork to thousands of customers or a single high-dollar customer appreciation gift to a key account, having the right address is important.   Before you send off that precious cargo, ask yourself if you&#39;re sending it to a physical address or a mailing address. 

Physical addresses and mailing addresses are frequently confused. While they are sometimes the same, there are many reasons why they can be different.

Mailing Address vs Physical Address: What’s the Difference

July 20, 2021 - PROVO, UTAH - SmartyStreets, a leader in location data intelligence, announces the release of the new US Address Verification - Enhanced Matching.  Enhanced matching successfully verifies the messiest of addresses and includes 15 million additional valid addresses not found in the USPS address database.   The new enhanced matching engine successfully validates and corrects more ill-formatted addresses than ever before.  Corrections include greater varieties of misspellings, redundant text, incomplete addresses, and sloppy data. 

Data covers valid addresses not found in the USPS address database, for a total of 175 million addresses.

SmartyStreets Adds 15 Million US Addresses and Better Match Rates

September 22, 2020 - PROVO, UTAH - SmartyStreets, the leader in location data intelligence, announces the release of their US Rooftop Geocoding and US Reverse Geocoding.  These new products will provide customers with the highest precision geocodes available in the market today.   Most other geocoding providers provide “parcel-centroid” geocodes.  That means that the geocodes are approximations of the center of a property or parcel.  While providers in the past have called their geocodes “rooftop accurate,” in reality, their geocodes are often quite far from the actual rooftop of a property. 

SmartyStreets releases the new  US Autocomplete Pro API, a service that improves data governance at the source and simplifies address data entry in real-time.

New Hyper-Accurate US Rooftop Geocoding and US Reverse Geocoding Announcement

May 28, 2020 - PROVO, UTAH - SmartyStreets, a leader in location data intelligence, announces the release of the new  US Autocomplete Pro API, a service that improves data governance at the source and simplifies address data entry in real-time.    The US Autocomplete Pro API starts suggesting valid addresses as soon as the user first starts typing an address.  All addresses suggested are 100% validated and standardized, and are returned to the user in a fraction of a second.  Additionally, the API can determine if an address should also include a unit number, and will suggest valid unit numbers to the user accordingly. 

New Autocomplete Service Improves Data Quality and Entry Speed at Source

TLS (and its predecessor SSL) are cryptographic protocols that provide authentication and data encryption for clients connecting with web servers.  As new vulnerabilities are discovered, older cryptographic protocol versions are deprecated to maintain secure environments.   On Tuesday, January 21, 2020, Smarty (formerly SmartyStreets) will require clients to use TLSv1. 2 or greater to connect with Smarty APIs without interruption.  Clients using TLSv1. 0 or TLSv1. 1 will no longer be able to connect. 

On Tuesday, January 21, 2020, Smarty will require clients to use TLSv1.2 or greater to connect with Smarty APIs without interruption.

SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT: Removing Old TLS Versions

At approximately 1:30 PM Mountain Time (3:30 PM Eastern) on November 13, 2018, we observed a significant latency spike from our external monitoring tools that we configured to access our load balancing tier of our cloud-based APIs.  These monitoring tools provide full, end-to-end testing and are meant to simulate a complete user experience with our application.   By design our systems can easily process in excess of 25x the usual amount of traffic we receive.  We do this because of our customer usage patterns wherein we may observe a 10-fold increase in traffic within a short period of time—usually a few minutes or even a few seconds. 

At approximately 3:30 PM Eastern on November 13, 2018, we observed a significant latency spike from our external monitoring tools...

2018-11-13 Incident Post-Mortem Report

It's been said that naming is one of the two hardest problems in computer science along with cache invalidation and 'off-by-one' errors.  (See what I did there?) Do you ever find yourself wondering what policies and practices you could adopt to make your life easier when reading code you wrote months ago? Or maybe you're up at night wishing you know how to write code in such a way as to maximize adoption and convenience for your users? Well, look no further because we've anticipated the need, solved the problem, and now we're sharing our knowledge and wisdom at no charge, all out of the goodness of our hearts in this comprehensive, totally no-nonsense (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) style guide of Go naming conventions. 

The style guide tutorial you never knew you didn't need

Go Naming Conventions

One topic that seems to come up repeatedly on Stack Overflow or other online forums is the topic of how to go get private dependencies.  Specifically, if I have a private Git repository on Github or Bitbucket, how do I bring that code locally via the go get tool such that automated builds can produce a clean, consistent build without interaction from a user? This problem is largely solved for public Github dependencies but continues to be a challenge for private dependencies.  To reiterate, if you're only cloning publicly available dependencies, you probably won't be reading this post. 

One topic that seems to come up repeatedly on Stack Overflow or other online forums is the topic of how to GO GET private dependencies. We can help.

Cloning Private Dependencies in Docker and Go

Writing test functions in Go is easy:  go package stuff  import "testing"  func TestStuff(t testing. T) {     t. Log("Hello, World!") }   Running test functions is also easy:   $ go test -v === RUN   TestStuff --- PASS: TestStuff (0. 00s) 	stuff_test. go:6: Hello, World! PASS ok  	github. com/smartystreets/stuff	0. 006s   Preparing shared state for multiple test functions is problematic.  The usual recommendation is to use table-drive tests.  But this approach has its limits.  For us, xUnit is the ideal solution. 

Why? What do you mean 'why'? Because we can! What's wrong with you?

Let's build an xUnit-style test runner for Go!

I was recently asked two interesting questions:  1.  Why did you move from GoConvey to gunit? 2.  Are you recommending folks do the same?  These are great questions, and since I'm a co-creator of GoConvey and principle author of gunit I feel responsible to give a thorough answer.  For the impatient, here's the TL;DR:  Question 1: Why did you move to gunit?  > After using GoConvey and feeling consistent friction with that approach, we came up with an alternate approach that was more aligned with what we value in a testing library and which eliminated said friction. 

A response to the question: Should I follow Smarty and leave GoConvey for gunit?

A History of Testing in Go at Smarty

For the purpose of this article, consider the following CSV data, slightly modified from the docs for encoding/csv:  go csvData := strings. NewReader(strings. Join([]string{ 	first_name,last_name,username, 	"Rob","Pike",rob, 	Ken,Thompson,ken, 	"Robert","Griesemer","gri", }, "\n"))   Here's how you read the data, line by line, using the Reader provided in that package:  go reader := csv. NewReader(csvData)  for { 	record, err := reader. Read() 	if err == io. EOF { 		break 	} 	if err != nil { 		// handle the error. 

Wouldn't it be nice if csv.Reader was more like bufio.Scanner?

Scanning CSV in Go

For this installment of the Testing in Go series we'll be talking about a grouping of packages that facilitate general-purpose comparisons in various contexts.  Since the most common context is testing it seemed like this series was the right place for the discussion.   We generally refer to these comparison functions as assertions (cue ominous background music and spooky sound effects).  You may have already read the opinions found on the Golang FAQ related to assertions.   "Why does Go not have assertions?"  > Go doesn't provide assertions. 

Testing in Go by Example: Part 6

Introduction  TL;DR: Choose an approach to software testing that helps your organization create the best possible end results.  That might mean using and/or creating a few tools and/or libraries along the way.  Or, maybe not.  What follows is a description of what we do at SmartyStreets, couched as a response to Dan Mullineux's equally valid way of doing things.    The cost  > A favourite test helper library, with some simple test assertion functions clearly has some value. . .  They [testing libraries] are not so bad, but they come at a cost, defer to avoid them. 

We care about testing our software and we create tools and libraries that help us.

Our Testing Tools

I was given the task of setting up a tinc VPN so that we could test performance for comparison against other VPN systems.  This task took much longer than it should have.  For that reason I am making this post to help myself and others remember how to do it again in the future.   ----------  Installing tinc is straightforward enough.  You can download the latest release and build it, or install from your favorite package manager.   The configuration for tinc lives in /etc/tinc.  The configuration is what seems to be the hard part of getting tinc to work. 

A quick and dirty reference guide on how to setup a Tinc VPN.

How To Setup A Tinc VPN

Not every server is made equally.  On dedicated servers the hardware varies widely.  On virtual and cloud servers the resource allocations also vary widely.  Some servers are CPU optimized for maximum computing power.  Others focus on having a lot of memory.  Some servers are built to have a good balance of all system resources.   Hardware aside, we require many differing tasks of our servers.  Some applications are processor hungry, some need large amounts of disk space, while others take up a lot of memory. 

A quick how-to guide for using the Phoronix Test Suite to measure server effectiveness.

Performance Testing With Phoronix

For this installment of the Testing in Go series I'll share a really nifty way to deal with time in your unit tests.  When the behavior you are testing depends on the current time it can be tricky to assert on the results because the current time is a moving target.  So, usually we end up resorting to approximations in our assertions that, while functional, always bother me a bit.  In some cases, depending directly on the system's current time prevents acceptable test coverage.   Consider this trivial example, which defines a calendar service with a method that identifies the current quarter of the current calendar year:   File: calendar. 

An elegant and effective strategy for dealing with time in unit tests

Testing in Go by example: Part 5

I think it's time for a slight detour.  In part 1 we covered the basics of testing in go.  In part 2 we covered a few slick ways to execute tests.  In part 3 we covered some of our recent endeavors at Smarty to build on the basics.  Toward the end of that post we went into some detail regarding our approach to assertions.  The assertions referenced in the GoConvey project are actually their own separate project that are imported into GoConvey.  The nice thing about separating the assertions into their own separate project is that they can be used, well, separately. 

Testing in Go by example: Part 4

A Deceitfully Comforting Illusion --- In the US today, there are nearly 800,000 registered sex offenders.  As part of the registration process, each sex offender is required to report their physical address to a local police department (the exact process varies from state to state).  This is intended to empower the public to be able to identify where these offenders live and if one of them lives near you.  Having this information, you are supposed to be able to better protect your loved ones and yourself. 

State sex offender registries were created to keep families safe, but bad addresses cause them to fall far short of their purpose.

America's Sex Offender Registries

This post contains additional data referenced from the original sex offender registry post.        Records containing the following were excluded from our statistical analysis:  [Click to return to article]   state=?? and zip=00000 or 11111 street contains "not available" street contains "incarcerated" or "incac" or "incrc" or "incarc" street contains "prison" street contains "absconded" or "absconced" or "absc" street contains "detention" or "det" or "det ctr" or "det center" or "detain" or "dt ctr" street contains "deported" street contains "incarc" street contains "unknown" or "unk" street contains "deceas" or "deseas" street contains "jail" street contains "custody" street contains "immigration" street contains "transien" or "transnt" or "trnsnt" street contains "homeles" or "homles" street contains "inmate" street contains "out of state" street contains "xxx" street contains "failure" or "fail" street contains "fail" street contains "register" street contains "verif" street contains "behav" street contains "institut" or "inst" street is blank street contains "vicinity" street contains "fugit" street contains "no longer" street contains "correctio" or "corr" or "correct" street contains "complia" street contains "reform" street contains "block of" or "blk of" or "blk" state is blank and city contains "unk" street contains "&" street contains "underpass" street contains "offend" street contains "resident" street contains "between" city contains "unknown" AND zip contains "00000" street contains "moved" street contains "nonresident" street contains "unconfirmed" state and zip are same AND city is blank zip contains "jail" city contains "Not available" and zip is unintelligible as a zip street = city street contains " street + city + state has more than two entries street contains "complex" street contains "reincarc" city contains "convict" street contains "usp" street contains "penit" street contains "hosp" street contains "louis" and city is "St. 

Records excluded from our statistical analysis and percent of bad addresses in each state’s sex offender registry.

Appendix: America's Sex Offender Registries

A Convergence of Holidays ----- It's almost Memorial Day, a time when most of us take a little extra time to relax.  For a lot of us, it signals the start of summer; it comes around the time most school years end, and in warmer places, pools start to open after Memorial day.  It's a day of barbeques and soda and chips and lots of other things.   But this year is special.  Get out your limited-edition comics and author-signed fantasy novels.  Throw your polyhedral dice on the tabletop.  Grab your lightsabers. 

May 25th can become a special day for geeks everywhere. Lets celebrate our collective geekiness.

When the Stars of Geekdom Align

Here at Smarty, we're mostly programmers and developers.  There are a  few needles in the haystack here that don't know "Unix" from "eunuchs", which is unfortunate, but we're working on that.  And because we're all tech geeks over here, we like to talk about code, and tech, and why all that stuff is important.  In that spirit, we decided to talk about code in a way that maybe all of us should have considered a long time ago.    Your Hidden Meanings  Let's start with a scenario.  Imagine you go on a museum tour. 

Artists put effort into their work that they don't have to. As coders, so do we. This is important, because it's actually what separates Art from work.

Code as Art

Review:  Welcome to part 3 of our "Testing in Go" series.  If you're new here, feel free to catch up before reading on.   In part 1 of this series I eluded to our perceptions of the standard testing tools provided by the Go tool and the standard library and what was missing for us.  We all have different expectations of a testing tool and so it's no wonder that so many have been created.   Part 2 of the series focused on how we have made the act of running tests effortless and automatic.    Introduction  In this post and the next few posts I'll focus on our approach to writing actual tests. 

Conveying behavior with our approach to BDD in Go

Testing in Go by example: Part 3

Here at Smarty, we enjoy our geekery.  All of us indulge in pop culture to some degree, and while we all enjoy different flavors of said pop culture, there's at least one we all agree on without question:  Star Wars.  And that means that May 4th is a pretty crucial holiday for us.  Hopefully all of you are celebrating in some way.  We celebrated by buying tickets to go see Avengers: Age of Ultron together as an office.  It's another Disney property. . . and it's part of the reason this article was written. 

At Smarty May 4th is a pretty crucial holiday for us, and we're cautiously optimistic about what the Disney future holds.

Will Disney's ownership of Star Wars cause fans to 'Let it Go'?

Here's part 2 of our "Testing in Go" series.  If you're new, feel free to catch up before reading on.   ------------------------   Basics  You've already learned how to execute tests in Go for a single package.    $ go test   There's a bit more to it, though.  You can run any package from anywhere if you provide the import path.  For example, this command runs the actual tests for the "testing" package from the standard library:   $ go test -v testing   If you've already run go get github. com/bradfitz/http2 you can execute those tests from anywhere with this:   $ go test -v github. 

Tests that aren't easy to execute will be ignored.

Testing in Go by example: Part 2

Here's part 1 of our "Testing in Go" series.    Introduction  Thinking about trying Go? You won't regret it! It's great that testing is baked into the "testing" package from the standard library and the corresponding go test command (which has all sorts of useful and interesting flags).   We'd like to show you how easy it is to get started using the built-in testing tools and introduce you to some tools we've created.  This is the first installment of a series designed to do just that.   All you have to do is create a file named like *test. 

How to use the built-in 'testing' package.

Testing in Go by example: Part 1

While it's an unfortunate truth of of today's e-commerce world, it is one that cannot be ignored: Fraud is ever-present in online transactions.  The expense of unnecessary shipping costs and human resources, disgruntled customers, and the time it takes to investigate disputes adds up.  And the damage to a company's brand may result in untold amounts of lost sales.    Using an address verification service (or AVS) as one of the tools in your fraud management toolbox is a smart and cost-effective move. 

How to use USPS Address Verification to Prevent Fraud.

Using USPS Address Verification to Prevent Fraud

Posted by Rob G.    Must Have Address to Play  Every month, tens of billions of apps are downloaded from the Google Play store.  Users of those apps have historically had limited contact with the app developers for asking questions or lodging a complaint.  And getting a response from some developers has proved to be a very difficult experience.    Google briefly considered requiring app developers to provide their physical address or have their app removed from Google's play store.  Providing a physical address where customer questions or complaints can be handled would work well for developers that have a separate business address. 

Google has decided jump into the Big Brother arena with their latest project, Google Strands: a DNA-based developer identification system.

Google Retracts Physical Address Requirement for Play Store Developers

Written by Jonathan Oliver    Comcast's Evil Twin  We love our movies and our television.  After a hard day at work, many Americans like to enjoy some downtime with a good TV show or movie.  When technology advanced in the 1980s in the form of video cassette tapes, this gave us a new choice for how and when we consumed media.  From this innovation came a natural outgrowth: the video store.  Virtually every town in America had one.  The stores weren't glamorous, but we came.  We came because we value our ability to choose. 

We love our movies and our television. After a hard day at work, many Americans like to enjoy some downtime with a good TV show or movie.

Celebrating the Death of Comcast

Why Do Some Businesses Fail, and Others Succeed Against All Odds?  On the last day of my microeconomics class, my professor asked us a question:  > "If there are 1. 333 trillion barrels of oil left on the planet and we use 6. 89 billion barrels of oil each year, how long will it take for us to run out of oil?"   Pencils and calculators came out to solve what seemed like a math problem.  I also started to do the long division, but then stepped back.  It occurred to me that economics is a branch of sociology, not math. 

If there are 1.333 trillion barrels of oil left on the planet, and we use 6.89 billion barrels of oil each year, how long will it take for us to run out of oil?

Constrained & Disloyal

You asked for it and now you've got it.   For packages that pass all tests, coverage reports are generated and made available by clicking the package name, which in that case becomes a link (provided you've cleared your browser's cache!).     Right now the coverage command that is run is something like this:      $ go test -covermode=set -coverprofile=. txt      That command generates a plain text profile used in the following command:      $ go tool cover -html=. txt -o . html      . . . which plunks down an html file which we can link to from the UI. 

For packages that pass all tests, coverage reports are generated and made available by clicking the package name.

HTML Coverage Reports with GoConvey

One of the great benefits of TDD/BDD is that you usually don't have to spend much, if any time at all in a debugger.  To enter a debugger is to admit a loss of control over the system under test.  Even so, there are times when you do need to debug something, even if you're maintaining the discipline.   Lately, most of my coding is in GoLang.  Coming from using an IDE almost exclusively to write Python (using PyCharm) and C# (using VS and ReSharper), and knowing how great the visual debugging tools are it's hard to fathom using a console-based debugger for GoLang code. 

One of the great benefits of TDD/BDD is that you usually don't have to spend much, if any time at all in a debugger...

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