QR Codes - The Best and The Worst QR codes have been gaining in popularity in Europe & the US over the past years. Commonly used throughout Eastern Asia – including Japan and China – their uptake in the Western world has been a little slower. However, with everyone starting to jump on the band wagon, we look at a few examples of where businesses got it right, and wrong. The Big Mistakes 1. Seems obvious right… Yea, some of the worst throughout QR codes are ones that go to flash sites (I’ve seen this with plenty of alcohol brands who look to look great but they’ve just lost the iPhone/iPad audience). 2. Kind of the same as above but a bad mobile experience is as bad (or potentially worst) than just a blank screen. 3. These things can be designed people, stop chucking ugly black QR codes on your beautifully designed packaging! 4. Duh. 5. In the subway, no-one can hear you scan a QR code. The Good…. Real Estate A really good use of QR codes is in real estate – you drive past a house and want more details. At Events The Bad…
How to speed up responsive websites Responsive web design is the buzzword of the decade already, and is ideal for the multi-screen connected world that we live in. However, the trade-off for this is in performance due to larger file sizes. This has prompted some experts to say that, like the early days of Flash, responsive design is something that we could all be getting excited about for no good reason. However, while at the moment there are performance issues, these can be overcome to some extent with some small adjustments, compression and image resizing. Why responsive design can perform slowly Responsive design loads all of the same HTML elements for every device, including those intended for tablet and desktop delivery. A study carried out last year showed that 86% of responsive sites currently online deliver a full desktop page to mobile devices. How can performance be improved? In order to improve performance, the size of the pages and resources loaded with it needs to be reduced. Conditional loading Images Text
30 things you need to do to be a great web developer - Web Development - Seopher.com Posted on Monday 26th of September 2011 at 12:44 in Web Development I'm forever being asked what it takes to be a web developer; and it's not as complicated as it might seem. Learning a subset of the overall skills will get you hired, while a good attitude will keep you employed. But is that really all it takes? Clearly not. I seem to be in a perpetual cycle of interviewing candidates to join the team, vetting contractors, rejecting freelancers and fixing other peoples problems. Core skills I'm not even going to discuss the concept of core skills. Accessibility and SEO I maintain that good SEO is a bi-product of strong accessibility adherence. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Security Every single developer needs to know a basic amount of security stuff; otherwise every site you build will get hacked. 6. 7. 8. 10. User experience, wireframes and basic interaction This is one of those areas that developers either don't have an aptitude for, or simply don't enjoy. 11. 12. 14. 15. Testing and risk management 16.
Faceted navigation best (and 5 of the worst) practices Webmaster Level: Advanced Faceted navigation, such as filtering by color or price range, can be helpful for your visitors, but it’s often not search-friendly since it creates many combinations of URLs with duplicative content. With duplicative URLs, search engines may not crawl new or updated unique content as quickly, and/or they may not index a page accurately because indexing signals are diluted between the duplicate versions. To reduce these issues and help faceted navigation sites become as search-friendly as possible, we’d like to: Selecting filters with faceted navigation can cause many URL combinations, such as Background In an ideal state, unique content -- whether an individual product/article or a category of products/articles -- would have only one accessible URL. Worst (search un-friendly) practices for faceted navigation Worst practice #1: Non-standard URL encoding for parameters, like commas or brackets, instead of “key=value&” pairs.
How Bill Gates' Favorite Teacher Wants to Disrupt Education In 2008, Sal Khan had a bright future making millions as a hedge fund manager. He gave it up to produce low-budget math films on YouTube for free. Fortunately, hidden among his millions of loyal students, were the wealthiest of educational philanthropists, Bill Gates and the Google Foundation. Now, with a whole lot of cash and even more street cred, Khan aims to demote the institution of "school" to just one of many educational options. Beginnings Khan Academy, the YouTube open-course series, began as verbal contract with a 7th-grade girl. Since YouTube encouraged universal access, Khan thought “Why not? “Random people started watching it, and I started getting good feedback,” Khan tells Fast Company. The Success Factor and Company Growth To his amazement, the videos were far more popular than his dedicated tutoring sessions. Five years and dozens of lessons later, the YouTube series was reaching tens of thousands of views a day. The Motivation Changes to the System
3 Reasons Why Duplicate Content Is Bad For SEO | Duplicate-Content.org Saying that duplicate content is bad for SEO is frequently an understatement. Duplicate content can cripple your SEO by lowering the number of pages available to rank. It's that simply and it can happen in 3 ways. 1 – Duplicate content dilutes link popularity The quantity and quality of inbound links pointing to your site is critical for SEO. Without links, your SEO is sunk. Having multiple URLs that host the same content means that your link juice or link equity can be split among as many URLs you have serving up the same content. For example, URL A might have 15 links point to it, and URL B might have 15 links point to it. 2 – Search engines decide which URL is best to show in the search results When you have duplicate content, or don't control your site's duplicate content, you give Google, Bing, Yahoo! Additionally, research shows that users are more likely to click on shorter, rather than longer URLs. 3 – New content might not get crawled, indexed or ranked But wait, there's more.
Cloud Hosting : Public and Private Servers at TopHosts.com Cloud Hosting has become quite popular as Web 2.0 and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications continue to increase in demand. Need the performance of a dedicated server without the cost? Need a hosting solution that is easily scalable based on the traffic and resources your web site or online application need? Web hosting customers who seek the ability to scale as users and service demands, looking for all the performance they need and only the cost of what they are using without having to worry about hardware and server requirements are quickly turning to Cloud hosting providers. Discuss Cloud Hosting at our TopHosts Forum. DiscountASP.NET announces Everleap, a next-generation cloud hosting solution powered by Windows Azure Pack Posted on 16 April 2014 . April 15, 2014 – DiscountASP.NET, a leader in Windows hosting, announces the launch of Everleap, a cloud hosting platform for websites built on top of Microsoft Windows Azure Pack, the same technology used by Microsoft Azure.
Time for a New Definition of SEO The way we market, sell and deliver SEO services has undoubtedly changed. Google's algorithm updates have made content marketing and social media the core of a strong organic search strategy. So while the practice of SEO evolves, the definition of SEO ought to evolve as well. Other digital marketing tactics such as email marketing, paid search and search retargeting have very clear, undisputed definitions. The definition of SEO, on the other hand, seems to be just as unclear as the practice itself. Current Definitions of SEO Even when you Google the phrase, "definition of SEO", nothing really concrete is returned. Wikipedia's official definition is, "the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page." Search engine optimization is about way more than this. SEO is more than this too. Is Web Presence Optimization the Evolution of SEO? So what is an accurate description of SEO given the changes to the industry? SEO in the digital marketing mix is here to stay.
Beyond YouTube: Turning Video Viewers Into Customers - Smb - Two SMBs dissatisfied with a lack of tangible return from their online video audiences went looking for an alternative to YouTube. Here's what they found. 5 Social Networks To Achieve 10 Business Tasks (click image for larger view and for slideshow) So your YouTube video was a hit. Some viewers probably gave it a thumbs-up or left a comment. The safe bet? YouTube's sheer size--800 million unique visitors watch more than three billion hours of video there each month--is both a blessing and a curse for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). "YouTube is about YouTube," said Tom Telford, CEO of Cedar Creek Cabin Rentals, in an interview. Telford sees online video as a must-have means for engaging potential customers--especially in his high-end travel business. [ Drive more traffic to your website with SEO For SMBs: 7 Timely Tips. ] Another Viewbix user, Aish.com, has had its share of YouTube hits. "That was the biggest thing. SMBs have saved big buying software on a subscription model.
Media :: Developers :: We Buy iPhone Apps! We works with App Developers to Market and Promote their Apps. No costs to the App Developers Who is Wizzard Media? We are the largest podcasting company in the world, with over 1.64 Billion downloads in 2010, mostly via iTunes. That's over 4 million a day! Our new media network consists of 15,000 podcast producers and our Podcast listeners & viewers are familiar with iTunes, enthusiastic about new media, early adaptors with disposable income. Our studies show that the people who are active in iTunes for podcasting are a perfect target audience for app promotion. Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002 (Alertbox) #-#Used to track user’s interaction with embedded content. Maximum Storage Duration: SessionType: HTML Local Storage __Secure-ROLLOUT_TOKENPending Maximum Storage Duration: 180 daysType: HTTP Cookie __Secure-YECStores the user's video player preferences using embedded YouTube video Maximum Storage Duration: SessionType: HTTP Cookie __Secure-YNIDPending -306851d5-1687Pending iU5q-! LAST_RESULT_ENTRY_KEYUsed to track user’s interaction with embedded content. LogsDatabaseV2:V#||LogsRequestsStoreUsed to track user’s interaction with embedded content. Maximum Storage Duration: PersistentType: IndexedDB nextIdUsed to track user’s interaction with embedded content. remote_sidNecessary for the implementation and functionality of YouTube video-content on the website. requestsUsed to track user’s interaction with embedded content. ServiceWorkerLogsDatabase#SWHealthLogNecessary for the implementation and functionality of YouTube video-content on the website. Maximum Storage Duration: 1 dayType: HTTP Cookie
Meme Creation Resources To Start You On Your Way To Internet Fame Posted by Jared Carrizales on Wednesday, July 4, 2012 · 1 Comment inShare Move over infographics, it’s time for memes to have their 15 minutes of fame. With the successes of companies like Virgin Media, SEOmoz, and even schools like ASU and the University of Wyoming, marketers have started to ride the meme wave. Unfortunately, creating the next “Success Kid” or “The Most Interesting Man In The World” is probably going to take some creativity-or at the very least a flash of genius. Meme Generators These are very straight forward and easy to get started. Know Your Meme Cheezburger Quick Meme Meme Generator Motivator Making Your Meme Once you have your generator of choice picked out, it becomes a matter of finding a meme that will compliment an idea that you have. A Brief Overview of Internet Memes & How You Can Quickly Create Your Own 5 Internet Websites And Tools To Create Meme Comics Making A Meme Comic With Rage Builder Marketing Your Meme How To Use Memes To Build Easy Backlinks and Traffic
New elements in HTML 5 Development of HTML stopped in 1999 with HTML 4. The W3C focused its efforts on changing the underlying syntax of HTML from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to XML, as well as completely new markup languages like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XForms, and MathML. Browser vendors focused on browser features like tabs and RSS readers. Web designers started learning CSS and the JavaScript™ language to build their own applications on top of the existing frameworks using Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax). But HTML itself grew hardly at all in the next eight years. Recently, the beast came back to life. This new version of HTML—usually called HTML 5, although it also goes under the name Web Applications 1.0—would be instantly recognizable to a Web designer frozen in ice in 1999 and thawed today. At the same time, this proverbial unfrozen caveman Web designer would encounter some new and confusing elements. That's not a happy coincidence. Structure Listing 1. Listing 2. aside mark