Internet posts

It’s April 2nd, and news sites have gone back to reporting the news instead of inventing it. Yesterday’s annual festival of invented headlines, some convincing, some lame, many frighteningly plausible, was as popular as ever with websites.

We played two pranks of our own: the introduction of certification for U.S. designers, and Apple turning to Flash for website security. But is All Fools’ Day popular with everyone? Are there some people who’d prefer to simply turn off the internet and work offline for the day?

Why do we feel the need to prank each other? Are we playing Devil’s...

The web has grown rapidly in the last two decades and its omnipresence makes it easy to forget that just 20 years ago it was an unheard of concept for most people.

While as designers and developers we feel fully engaged with the web, law makers are, perhaps inevitably, still running to catch up. The flurry of prosecutions worldwide for copyright theft, political dissent, and even bad jokes on twitter, all point to legal bodies struggling to cope with a technological shift that rivals the industrial revolution in significance.

The interests of governments have largely been directed at harnessing...

On December 3rd a closed-door meeting will take place in Dubai. In attendance will be members of the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union. On the agenda will be a proposal, tabled by Russia, for sweeping changes to how the internet operates.

The proposed measure is to add ‘IP-based networks’ to the existing International Telecommunications Regulations, which would in effect transfer all power of governance over the internet from the Internet Society,...

It will come as no surprise to anyone, that slow buffering of a video is highly likely to see viewers give up, and go and do something less boring instead.

Think about all the hours you’ve wasted staring at a progress bar. A few seconds here, a few seconds there, you’ve probably lost months of your life.

As content consumers, we can find delays unacceptable, we certainly find them both irritating and frustrating; I take a very dim view of a company that makes me wait for content, even if it’s no longer than it takes to grab a sip of coffee. A slow buffering video, jerkily streamed audio feed or even an image heavy site...

My therapist says I’m obsessed with revenge. He’ll be sorry he said that! It’s not that I’m paranoid about all of the people who are against me; I just want to make them all pay dearly.

I truly believe that the web is the greatest revenge weapon invented since the burning bag of dog poo on someone’s doorstep, and the novelty squirting flower filled with sulphuric acid.

Of course, I’m kidding about being so enamored with revenge. People just misunderstand my desire for social justice in our unjust society, world and universe, just like there’s a fine line between cuddling and holding someone tightly...

Some people think that branding is a highly expensive marketing activity that can only be pursued by multinationals with million dollar budgets while others regard branding as a highly complex strategy that only those well trained are able to use efficiently.

These statements are not false, but they are only a small part of a bigger picture. There’s at least one aspect of branding which is so simple that even a child could do it, as easy as pie, and with little to practically no cost whatsoever.

I’m talking about online branding.

Business of all sizes are joining the web experience, not only to build their own websites, but also...

Recent technology developments have sent traditional media into a tailspin, turning nearly every proven marketing strategy into a gamble.

Across the world, in every industry, companies are scrambling to update the marketing tactics on which they’ve relied for generations. At the same time, consumers are craving engaging, relevant content that complements both their interests and their lifestyles.

The most popular search engines have responded to these demands with fundamental changes that have shaken the advertising industry’s foundation.

As marketers, publishers and business owners strive to keep up with this critical juncture in online media, two things are clear: multiplatform...

Two bills currently making their way through the United States Congress—SOPA and PIPA—threaten freedom of expression and security online, not to mention the American economy (and economies of countries directly tied to the U.S.).

In protest of these two incredibly dangerous and damaging bills, large portions of the internet will voluntarily blackout in whole or in part on Wednesday, January 18th. Among them are Wikipedia, Mozilla, and Tumblr.

If you’re a U.S. resident, be sure to educate yourself about the bills, their potential effects, and what you can do to stop them from passing. Call your Congressional representatives or send them emails telling them you...

I recently added to my top ten most embarrassing moments of my professional life. No, I won’t be listing the top ten but this one was extremely disturbing because it affected a lot of people and basically went unnoticed and pushed out the truth and replaced if with a falsehood that had become the truth. I’m referring to an article I wrote about a famous designer but the images of the fantastic work weren’t actually his.

It was not my intention to prank or scam readers but I used the wonderful World Wide Web to gather my information and that was a blunder I should have seen coming. It wasn’t until a reader pointed out that the designer did not do the work, that I scrambled to find out the truth. At first, I thought, by the way the comment was worded, it was just a spam scam for a website and...

If you run an online business, drawing customers to your website is vital for your continued success.

While lots of effort tends to be spent on SEO and gaining new visitors, ensuring they return is another matter. Email newsletters are the perfect opportunity to inform your past visitors of reasons to return.

Even if you don’t use email newsletters for your own business, you’ll likely run into a client who wants to use them sooner or later.

Email is one of the oldest forms of online communication, and one that hasn’t evolved much since it’s inception due to it’s use on a wide variety...

As web designers and developers, we love to see how our sites and web apps look and function using a really good browser.

It’s true that with the release of IE9, Microsoft has made great progress in the so-called browser wars. And although IE9 is a fast and reliable browser that has pretty good support for CSS3 and HTML5, there are still quite a few missing technologies that we all would like to see in Internet Explorer soon.

But the reality is that while we as developers know that the user experience is greatly improved when a site is viewed in Chrome, Opera, Safari, or even Firefox, our users are not aware of this. And it’s sad to say that it will still be a very long time before developers can say that we’re happy with the state of browser usage stats for our client projects.

Personally, I always do what I can to promote the good browsers. If I see someone using an older version of Internet Explorer, I will gladly...