Sips from the firehose
A Blog That Seeks to Reduce the Web to One Easily-Gulped BeverageTech Writing in the Voice of an Erudite 19th Century Gentleman
If we're going to have to suffer through endless TOS statements, they might as well be fun to read I seem to have struck some kind of nerve this week in responding to a whimsical Tweet referencing something that we are all guilty of - losing focus while slogging...
CSS 4: the Web Design Standard that Doesn’t Exist. Only It Does. Confused Yet?
Yesterday, upon the stair/ I saw a web design standard that was not there/ It was not there again today/ Gee, I wish it'd go away... Years ago, I helped the lovely & brilliant Janine Warner create books, classes and training videos about web design. This was like...
Uncovering Ad Fraud at Financial Times: $1.3 Million PER MONTH
Investigation reveals "organized crime" at one paper - how many more are undiscovered? I know that I sound like a broken record on this subject, but for God's sake, it's been 3 years now since pretty much everybody in the digital ad industry acknowledged that there...
Shwedagon Pagoda and Dave by Night
As with so many major cities in Asia, the ancient and the modern exist side-by-side.
Quirks of the Internet in Myanmar
No TOR, but Rule 66 instead I've been in Yangon for more than two weeks now, and I'm starting to run into the outer edges of what is allowed here on the internet. First, Netflix and Apple Music work here. So I'm able to (pretty much) update the apps on my iPhone and...
Mobile Phone Wizards
I bought a new Sim card from one of the hundreds of tiny shops that line Insein Road here in Rangoon. The guy on the right here wasn't absolute magician with my phone. His fingers move so fast I could barely see them as he was setting up my phone to work on the...
Just What Is a Digital Native Anyway?
Not to get all existential on your or anything, but it's the difference between "Being" and "Doing" Recently, while putting the finishing touches on a Great Big Important Research Project For A Huge Client, I got into a discussion with Janine Warner, my partner in all...
Whither Digital Advertising, Mid-2017 Edition: NYTimes Take; Analytics to the Rescue!
Are we about to see advertisers "flee to quality"? And would a complete overhaul of digital advertising be good for journalists and netizens who produce honest, high-quality content (and more importantly, bad for Fake News)? Mark Thompson, the CEO of the New York...
DDoS Attacks for $2/day: Researching the DarkNet
Hackers hire out their botnets for DDoS attacks for as little as $2/day I've been working on a series of articles on the threats to activists, independent journalists and innocent bystanders targeted by trolls that lurk on the web. This has led me to some of the...
Internet Security for Creative Professionals – The Basics
Hackers want in. Don't make it easy for them. With all the controversies swirling around hacked emails and cyber-threats, I was asked to come in to USC-Annenberg, and speak to the students about what they need to know about security. Basically, I had to come in do a...
Experimental VR Art Project at Google’s Venice HQ
Depending upon your tolerance for the sight of people wearing virtual reality helmets all craning their necks and looking about themselves, this video is either really charming or really alarming. https://youtu.be/rkYhBwLmf3E Thanks to Kluge interactive for the invite...
The UX of Decent Online Discussions: Twitter’s New Troll-Killing Algo
Twitter is rolling out three new tools to crack down on trolls, spam & abuse Meanwhile, there's also "Project Coral" - backed by NY Times, Washington Post and Mozilla - rolling out Talk and Ask, aimed at making comment threads a way to connect with an audience -...