This post has absolutely nothing to do with web design, marketing. branding, browsers or social media. It’s just cool. And inspiring. We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. — T.S. Eliot Jeff Bezos and… [Read more]
Thoughts
The rise of digital brands
As much as I hate the phrase “game-changer,” if any tech company qualifies, it’s Shopify. Building and managing an online shopping experience 10 years ago was a frustrating, tedious, tear-inducing, pain in the ass. Shopify changed all that. From shopping cart functionality and payment processing, to tax rates, multi-carrier shipping, customer notifications and inventory control,… [Read more]
Blocking bad trackers
By default, future versions of the Firefox browser will automatically block tracking codes placed by third-party advertisers and networks. In addition, Firefox users will be offered a clear set of options to control what information they share with websites. This is a good thing. Firefox’s new browser will keep brands from stalking you Written for… [Read more]
The LOC gets a new logo
The Library of Congress (LOC) just got a new logo. It was created by the influential graphic designer Paula Scher, a partner at the New York firm Pentagram. You probably hadn’t notice the new look, but a lot of people did — Like John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who seems to be especially annoyed: This… [Read more]
A slow death for Flash
Loathed by web purists, but loved by graphic artists who couldn’t code, Adobe Flash inches closer to obscurity. Adobe Flash is a once-dominant multimedia software platform used for the production of animations, applications, games, and web browser video players. It is also an insecure, ubiquitous resource hog that has put users at risk since 1999…. [Read more]
What the hell is AMP?
The Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP) is a website publishing technology developed by Google to help improve the performance of web content and advertisements. AMP is a direct competitor to Facebook’s Instant Articles, and includes several other large search, social and web publishing platforms around the world. Google first began showing the AMP versions of web… [Read more]
Weaponizing social media
Mark Zuckerberg once characterized Facebook as a “benign utility” that promoted human interaction, community, and connectivity. Still accurate? Not so much. As discussed by Kara Swisher of Recode in a recent article for the New York Times, Facebook could be losing the battle to control the behavior of its users. It’s a great read if… [Read more]
da Vinci was a doodler
I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard of Leonardo da Vinci, the 15th century artist most famous for painting the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. But maybe you didn’t know that he was also a sculptor, engineer, architect, and inventor. In fact, despite Leonardo’s wizardry with a brush, only 15 paintings have been attributed to… [Read more]
A single window
… life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all. — F. Scott Fitzgerald / The Great Gatsby 1925 In the context of his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald probably wasn’t thinking about web design. I get that. More likely, this memorable line suggests that a person needs to focus on… [Read more]
Digital privacy in California
Consumer privacy law coming in 2020 On June 28 California passed a digital privacy law granting consumers more control over, and insight into, their online personal information. Though not as expansive as the European Union’s recently enacted General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the new law is one of the most significant regulations to watch over… [Read more]
