One minute overview seriesWednesday, July 1st 2020 From user accounts to shopping carts, websites use cookies to keep track of visitors in order to properly display content. We’ve all heard of cookies but what exactly are they? Good question.
A cookie is a small amount of data stored on a user’s computer and sent back with various requests. In short, it’s typically a user ID. Once a website understands who you are, it can deliver information relevant to you specifically—shopping carts, user dashboards, targeted ads, and much more. Read More
A closer lookFriday, June 26th 2020 Minimum Viable Product is simply a strategy in which a product is introduced to market as soon as possible and then the additional features are built while learning from customer feedback. Typically this means that a roadmap of features is drawn and features are released one by one, but in extreme cases, products aren’t even fully functional until a presale has been made.
While certainly not ideal for many products, MVP is a strategy that works well in web development as it is very easy to release updates and gather feedback. Invariable customers will have opinions and perspectives that differ from your own and getting feedback early will allow for adaptation without significant extra expense. Read More
A closer lookWednesday, June 24th 2020 The last time you played a song in your car and the title showed up on the radio screen, you saw metadata in action—information that is hidden behind the scenes to provide additional detail about a file or system. Websites have metadata to provide information about the company, content type, publishing date, and more.
Structured Data, commonly ‘Schema.org’ is a collaboration between Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Yandex to provide a consistent format for websites. Using this clear format allows search engines to correctly categorize websites and interpret content. Read More
Security and PrivacyMonday, June 22nd 2020 In the 80's Xerox designed a way to hide information in plain sight as a way to combat counterfeiting. An ingenious, simple, and hidden code of small yellow dots called Printer Steganography were added to each printed document to include the date and time of printing and the serial number of the printer.
This yellow dot matrix is virtually imperceptible to the human eye, but can be easily captured and decoded with a scanner or camera. Since then, new variations have been used, including using various shades of grey within the printed matter to include data. Whatever you print with, there’s a very good chance there is some form of MIC being included on your printouts. Is it ingenious tracking? Absolutely. Is it a good thing? You decide. Read More
A closer lookFriday, June 19th 2020 Do you know what your audience is doing? Spotting attention, knowing where people are focused, being in touch with current trends is important and yet so easily overlooked and misinterpreted. Without some general knowledge of where interest falls, we are flying blind and simply hoping for the best. Most online businesses use the traffic stats of their own website to gain insight into what people want and where they lose interest, but in the best case of a large company this is working within the bubble of a small data set, and when launching a new company or product this simply isn’t an option. Read More
