Tech articles

There was a point at which I was very close to losing my business, and I didn’t realize how close. I wasn’t always a good planner, and I didn’t plan to start an agency. One day I was a freelance graphic designer, my job list grew, I hired some help, and suddenly I was managing a team. There isn’t a guidebook for new business owners, you have to learn on the job, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. We expanded rapidly from two to four...

AR (Augmented Reality) continues to build as one of the most exciting technology innovations to appear in recent years. More accessible than virtual reality experiences, since no specialist headset is required, AR has quickly emerged as a crucial tool for building unique experiences. Although interest in AR as a tool for customer interaction and experience has been growing, demand has skyrocketed in recent years. In addition, since the...

Websites as we know them are going to change very soon. The days of text, images, and basic interactions in a 2D browser window have served us well, but virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences are getting better all the time. Developers and designers need to think beyond the browser window and prepare for an immersive future. Many have been very skeptical about VR and AR in the past because despite grand promises about what they would...

YouTube is the Web’s biggest video channel. Hundreds of hours of video are uploaded to the service every minute. The volume of data it stores and streams is beyond comprehension. Owned by Google, YouTube has been central to our lives online in such a big way, that it’s almost unbelievable that it’s been with us for less than two decades. If you’ve ever wondered just how big it is, which videos broke its records, or how many users it has,...

At the dawn of the web-era, there was much focus on how environmentally friendly websites were: we’d chop down fewer trees, ship fewer products, and travel less for business. And because the web was small, any negative impact it had was relatively small. But the Internet’s no longer small, and neither is the impact it has on the environment. The average website uses 211,000g of CO2 per year, watching a video online outputs an estimated 0.2g...

Ten years ago, people began talking about the “Independent Web.” Although we don’t commonly use the term anymore, that doesn’t mean that it’s not still as vital a topic of discussion today as it was a decade ago. Today, I want to look at where the term came from, what it refers to today, and why it’s something that all of us in business, marketing, and web design should be thinking about. What Is The Independent Web? The Independent...

A domain name is an essential element of every project, product, and company. It’s central to a brand and has a disproportionately large impact on user experience. Not only that, but it also impacts SEO and ultimately revenue. Domain names are also one of the most commonly retailed elements in web technology, with most designers hoarding a small empire’s worth of domain names “just in case” the right side-project comes along. Because...

What is WordPress? It began as a simple CMS for building a blog, and it has evolved over the years into a complex ecosystem of tools and resources. WordPress can power ecommerce sites, interactive courses, art projects, and of course, it powers one or two blogs. Depending on who you ask, WordPress powers between 35% and 40% of the entire web; that makes it one of the most important technologies of the web era. Best of all, it’s free and open-source,...

If you’re here, then you’re thinking about becoming a web designer and wondering if it’s a smart move. Honestly, it’s not uncommon to be plagued by doubts and what-ifs when making a big career change, and that’s especially so right now, what with all the uncertainty we’ve faced over the last year. Here’s some good news: It’s never a bad time to become a web designer, which makes 2021 the perfect time to turn your passion into a...

The start of the year is always a good time to reassess priorities and consider new approaches, but 2021 is more of a reset than we expected this time last year. 2020 is unlikely to go down in anyone’s autobiography as the best year of their life, but it has done something positive: it’s prepared the ground for rapid change in the next 12 months. More than any other year in our lifetimes, 2021 is set to be revolutionary, with emerging trends that...

If you were paying close attention to your IT department around the 8th of December, you might have heard some quiet sobbing and the occasional wail of, “Why? Why?! WHY?!” Now, it was the year 2020, so this might have seemed normal to you, but it’s actually something of a problem that could affect your business: CentOS is pretty much dead. For the non-total-nerds among us, here’s the skinny: CentOS is a Linux-based operating system,...

There are dozens of factors that influence the UX of your site, app, or game. Most of them are beyond your control; user connection speed, end-system resources, even browser technology is all out of your hands. So when you do have the opportunity to influence your project’s infrastructure, you should seize it. The world’s fastest muscle car can’t perform at its best when traffic is gridlocked bumper to bumper; likewise, the most finely...

Naturally, there are bad clients out there, but 90% of the time, it’s not really the client who is at fault. Poor communication, a lack of setting expectations, and a failure to qualify clients beforehand is usually the problem. If you’re dealing with a problematic client, there’s usually not a lot you can do to ‘fix’ things — you should focus on finishing the project as well as you can. However, what you can do is ensure this situation...

2020 has been an interesting year, to say the least. And although I’m sure many of you can’t wait until the calendar flips ahead to 2021, it doesn’t look as though we're going to be able to say goodbye to 2020 so easily. Many of the changes we’ve had to make this year are now expected to stay with us — a least for the following year. The latest research gives us some hints about what’s to come. If you want to start preparing for 2021 now, then...