Technology surrounds us, but what do most internet users understand about it? A Pew survey on web and digital technology found that only 23% of adult users are aware that “the Internet” and “the World Wide Web” are not the same thing. And while 83% of those surveyed could correctly identify Bill Gates, fewer than half knew that Facebook started at …
Friday 5 — 11.21.2014
Google is now clearly identifying mobile-friendly sites in its search results. While Google’s search algorithm remains a well-kept secret, it’s not a stretch to infer that sites that perform well on mobile will index better for its search. Wasting time on Facebook at work is a popular pastime, even if you have to access it stealthily on …
Friday 5 — 10.31.2014
Benedict Evans demonstrates how mobile is eating the world. It’s worth reading for the astonishing growth metrics, like 80% of all adults in the world owning smartphones by 2020. One larger point is that tech is rapidly moving beyond the tech sector to transform all industries. And for now, that starts mobile first. Product managers are critical in the …
How to lead a responsive web design
Web thought leaders and authors Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte now publish a popular responsive web design podcast. Each episode features an interview with the people who make responsive redesigns happen, and covers the various complexities from change management and organizational readiness to design optimization and monetizing mobile. You can see my interview here, which talks about the current content strategy shift toward mobile, and …
Friday 5 — 9.19.2014
Facebook is updating its News Feed, again. This set of changes focuses on putting more weight on trending topics, so your feed reflects more discussion of what’s going on right now. Now the recency of the likes and comments on posts will matter more, perhaps reducing the frequency of those odd moments when a friend’s heavily-liked …
Friday 5 — 8.22.2014
Brands are active on social networks to reach engaged audiences, and the networks are finding creative ways to monetize their involvement. SoundCloud this week announced a new advertising platform, just as Instagram rolled out its analytics tools for brands. Both SoundCloud and Instagram have afforded brands huge organic growth; the challenge will be to offer them new …
Friday 5 — 8.1.2014
In less than a year Product Hunt has become an essential daily ritual for the tech obsessed. How did it get there? It identified a clear problem: “Help me find the latest new, cool things.”Then the team made a bunch of smart decisions, including launching with an early, buggy version (and improving from there!), starting …
Friday 5 — 7.25.2014
The New Yorker has updated its web presence to take advantage of the internet’s love affair with quality, longform reads. The mobile design gets it right, with smooth interactive elements like a fly-in hamburger menu. This Guardian review credits the re-design for avoiding looking “like a middle-aged man dropping the ends of his words in …
Friday 5 — 6.20.2014
Email subscriptions can be pernicious — almost every online interaction bullies you into adding another. Try Unrollme to clean up your inbox by unsubscribing from the mail you never quite get around to reading. What will wearables mean for the workplace? Salesforce releases code libraries to inspire app development, with potential impact on both in-office productivity …
5 ways Google delivers winning World Cup results
If you can’t watch every game live, you may be spending a lot of time surreptitiously tuning into the World Cup via search. Google serves up a clean, selective summary on the search results page above the organic news and web links. A search today for “France World Cup” yielded the interface below on desktop …