WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Google has gathered so much data, in so many areas, that it’s now crunching it together and creating features that Apple can’t make—surrounding Google Maps with a moat of time.

If anyone uploads a profile picture that includes your face, Facebook will alert you of that, too. “We’re doing this to prevent people from impersonating others on Facebook,” the company wrote on its blog Tuesday.

A narrative about a recent assessment I did to a peer’s website which ended up in a potentially very impactful situation.

I’ve been following the idea of algorithm-driven design for several years now and have collected some practical examples. The tools of the approach can help us to construct a UI, prepare assets and content, and personalize the user experience. The information, though, has always been scarce and hasn’t been systematic. However, in 2016, the technological foundations of these tools became easily accessible, and the design community got interested in algorithms, neural networks and artificial intelligence (AI). Now is the time to rethink the modern role of the designer.

On today’s web it’s hard to set a (digital) foot online without it attracting dozens of trackers and log entries, as companies look to learn everything about you and sell that data on to advertisers. To hide you’ve got a few tools at your disposal, many of which we’ve talked about in the past, and all of which add up to a largely anonymous browsing experience. What we can’t do is promise 100 percent that you won’t be tracked—we’re not privy to the inner workings of the FBI or your employer’s IT system—but this is as much as you can do.

Is the future of content management decoupled? Centralization around a single source of content has never been more important as marketers aim to reach

Learn more about the implications of the JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs & Markup) & static site CMS for non-technical clients & businesses.

Yesterday, Brad Duncan, a Threat Intelligence Analyst for Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, wrote a blog article discussing how the EITest Chrome Font Update campaign, which was previously discovered by Kafeine, is now distributing the Spora Ransomware instead.

What does 2017 have in store for us? We asked the industry’s experts for their views on the future of web design trends.

1. Conversational interfaces
2. Machine learning
3. Emotionally intelligent design
4. Virtual reality
5. Location and context awareness
6. Micro-interactions
7. Colors
8. Cohesive experiences
9. Even more JavaScript!
10. Designed failure
11. Design sprints
12. Better collaboration across design and development
13. Merging of UX and service design
14. Facebook and Google as destinations for content
15. Credibility becomes king
16. Mass disruption to foundational Internet services
17. The rise of the diversity designer
18. Bonus: 2017 According to Jeffrey Zeldman

This survey finds that a majority of Americans have directly experienced some form of data theft or fraud, that a sizeable share of the public thinks that their personal data have become less secure in recent years, and that many lack confidence in various institutions to keep their personal data safe from misuse. In addition, many Americans are failing to follow digital security best practices in their own personal lives, and a substantial majority expects that major cyberattacks will be a fact of life in the future.

The majority of adults in a new survey by the Pew Research Center feel that their privacy is being challenged along such core dimensions as the security of their personal information and their ability to retain confidentiality.

When Americans are asked what comes to mind when they hear the word “privacy,” there are patterns to their answers. When responses are grouped into themes, the largest block of answers ties to concepts of security, safety, and protection. For many others, notions of secrecy and keeping things “hidden” are top of mind when thinking about privacy.

The diminishing effectiveness of conventional advertising and the rise of social media have led more and more brands to embrace content marketing. More and more companies are seeing themselves not just as advertisers, but as publishers, launching digital newsrooms, podcasts, and other forms of branded content in order keep their brands, perspectives, and value propositions in front of customers.

Mozilla’s new open source initiative to document and explain what’s happening to the health of the Internet. Combining research from multiple sources, we collect data on five key topics and offer a brief overview of each.

You have a twin – a “digital” twin. It does everything you do.

The same way you exercise your body to stay fit, or brush your teeth to prevent long-term decay and problems, your digital twin needs care so that it does not become a problem in the future. Get to know this twin and you can manage it, secure it and protect it. Here is how to do this.

The Wall Street Journal did an interesting piece looking at Google, privacy and the extent of their knowledge (as well as other entities like Facebook). I suggest you read it for the details. The following image gives some insight into just how much Google has on one WSJ reporter.

Online tracking is no longer about "cookies." New technology helps trackers link online breadcrumbs — including across devices — through browser settings, battery levels and other details.

Data Privacy Day Reminds Organizations That Protecting Customers’ Privacy is Critical to Their Business

Only Facebook could create Safety Check, not because of resources as you might expect, but because Facebooks lets employees build crazy things like Safety Check and because only Facebook has 1.5 billion geographically distributed users, with a degree of separation between them of only 4.74 edges, and only Facebook has users who are fanatical about reading their news feeds. A small team couldn’t build a big pipeline and index, so they wrote some hacky PHP and effectively got the job done at scale.

This paper details how Facebook build Safety Check

There's a powerful tool hiding in your browser: Inspect Element.
Right-click on any webpage, click Inspect, and you'll see the innards of that site: its source code, the images and CSS that form its design, the fonts and icons it uses, and the Javascript code that power

What does 2017 have in store for us? We asked the industry’s experts for their views on the future of web design trends.