create a toolbox in a minute.

This is a different take on Responsive Web design. This article discusses how we can better embrace what the Web is about by ignoring the big elephant in the room; that is, how we can rely on media queries and breakpoints without any concern for devices.

When your users load a page, retina.js checks each image on the page to see if there is a high-resolution version of that image on your server. If a high-resolution variant exists, the script will swap in that image in-place.

Continuing the Chrome extension hacking (see part 1 and 2), this time I'd like to draw you attention to the oh-so-popular AdBlock extension. It has over a million users, is being actively maintained and is a piece of a great software (heck, even I use it!). However - due to how Chrome extensions work in general it is still relatively easy to bypass it and display some ads. Let me describe two distinct vulnerabilities I've discovered. They are both exploitable in the newest 2.5.22 version.

Many people have an interest in building websites that take advantage of AJAX principles, while still being accessible to search engines. This is an important issue that I've written about before in a (now obsolete) post from 2010. The tactic I shared then has been superseded by new technologies, so it's time to write the update.

It'll turn most URLs into a Full-Text XML feed that's easy to integrate into Applications. For example, I've built this demo Bookmarklet App:

Are you fascinated by dynamic data? Do you go green with envy when you see tweets pulled magically into websites? Trust me, I’ve been there.

Do you want a 9 KB cross-browser native JavaScript that makes your plain HTML lists super flexible, searchable, sortable and filterable? Yeah!
Do you also want the possibility to add, edit and remove items by dead simple templating? Hell yeah!

Following on from the send to Evernote addition for Evernote I also wanted to reproduce the Windows Evernote watched folders feature.  This allows a file moved to a specific folder to be automatically imported into a new note within Evernote and again can be accomplished with AppleScript.

Kendo UI Mobile (Beta) redefines the meaning of a "native" mobile app, providing mobile-specific UI widgets that automatically look native on different mobile devices. Learn one set of widgets and build stunning apps for iOS and Android.

ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones. ClickHeat is an OpenSource software, released under GPL licence, and free of charge.

Cube is an open-source system for visualizing time series data, built on MongoDB, Node and D3. If you send Cube timestamped events (with optional structured data), you can easily build realtime visualizations of aggregate metrics for internal dashboards. For example, you might use Cube to monitor traffic to your website, counting the number of requests in 5-minute intervals:

Fbootstrapp is a toolkit designed to kickstart development of facebook iframe apps in both relevant sizes. It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more, styled in the typical facebook look and feel.

The goal of a reset stylesheet is to reduce browser inconsistencies in things like default line heights, margins and font sizes of headings, and so on. The general reasoning behind this was discussed in a May 2007 post, if you're interested. Reset styles quite often appear in CSS frameworks, and the original "meyerweb reset" found its way into Blueprint, among others.

The reset styles given here are intentionally very generic. There isn't any default color or background set for the body element, for example. I don't particularly recommend that you just use this in its unaltered state in your own projects. It should be tweaked, edited, extended, and otherwise tuned to match your specific reset baseline. Fill in your preferred colors for the page, links, and so on.

In other words, this is a starting point, not a self-contained black box of no-touchiness.

If you want to use my reset styles, then feel free! It's all explicitly in the public domain (I have to formally say that or else people ask me about licensing). You can grab a copy of the file to use and tweak as fits you best. If you're more of the copy-and-paste type, or just want an in-page preview of what you'll be getting, here it is.

Personalize Your Site for Each Visitor. visitor.js is a small piece of JavaScript that provides you with information on your site's visitors, so you can target them with custom-tailored content

PaySwarm enables people that create digital content such as blog posts, music, film, episodic content, photos, virtual goods, and documents to distribute their creations through their website and receive payment directly from their fans and customers. If you have a passion for creating things on the Web, or would like to support people doing great things - PaySwarm is for you.

The platform is an open web standard that enables Web browsers and Web devices to perform Universal Web Payment. PaySwarm fixes the problems with rewarding people on the web - it reduces and nearly eliminates transactional friction. It ensures that the people that you want to support are automatically rewarded for their hard work.

This Web-native payment technology is designed to seamlessly integrate with how the Web works, not how the banks and the credit card companies work. The technology can be integrated directly into WordPress-based websites with support for Drupal and other content management systems in the works. It has a simple, well-defined API, like Twitter, that allows for universal payment on the web.

Create random @bitcoin wallets.

On Jan. 1, 1999, the euro was launched in electronic form. A few years later, amidst much fanfare, 12 European countries began replacing beloved national currencies with the euro, and the currency rapidly became the tender of choice across Europe. Wim Duisenberg, the then-president of the European Central Bank applauded the new currency: ”By using the euro notes and coins we give a clear signal of the confidence and hope we have in tomorrow’s Europe.”

This specification defines the meaning of a Do Not Track preference and sets out practices for websites to comply with this preference.

Eventually, we’ll all stop talking about responsive web design – not because it will go away, but because it will become what’s expected. Flashback ten years ago and we were all talking about CSS and tableless design, but today there’s no need to mention it. It’s simply the way modern websites are built, although sadly, I’m sure there’s a few out there still using tables.

Mit Popcorn arbeitet Mozilla an einem System für interaktive Webvideos mit HTML5. Mit Popcorn.js 1.0 ist jetzt die zentrale Bibliothek in einer stabilen Version veröffentlicht worden, aber Popcorn soll auch ohne Programmierkenntnisse verwendbar sein.

Landingpages für erklärungsbedürftige Hochpreisprodukte sind eine besondere Herausforderung, da sie mehrere Conversion Ziele auf einmal abdecken müssen. Einerseits muss ein mehrere Wochen andauernder Entscheidungsprozess unterstützt werden. Andererseits gilt es die Besucher auch rasch zu Käufern zu machen.
In dieser Clinic gehen wir speziell auf Landingpage Beispiele ein, die erklärungsbedürftige Produkte im Hochpreissegment verkaufen müssen. Als Hochpreissegment definieren wir in diesem Fall Produkte, die nicht beim ersten Besucher gekauft werden, sondern die eine länger andauernde Überzeugungs- und Entscheidungsphase voraus haben.

Whenever I talk to people about the growth of the mobile Internet, it's inevitable the question of commerce comes up. Yes, there's a lot more usage but are people buying on mobile?

DUMBO stands for “Down Under The Manhattan Bridge Overpass” and is the sliver between the Manhttan and Brooklyn Bridge. I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. Why? Well, I might be giving my secret away here, but, DUMBO let’s you fake small-town living in a big city. DUMBO’s streets are fairly quiet, and I like that. Yet, we look over to Manhattan and think “Oh, look, there’s NYC!”

Today we are launching new Page Insights to help Page admins understand how their content resonates with users. Measure everything from the number of stories about a Page to how viral a specific post has become. These new metrics are available today via Insights, FQL and the Graph API. For a list of the new metrics see the Insights FQL table.

It has been shown that the human capacity has still important advantages over computers.
Scientists have learned to use crowd sourcing tools to improve their research. To achieve cooperation, they present models of the problems in a game like display and challenge the partipants to find solutions.

Two weeks in, some of Facebook’s new media partners are finding triple the listeners and a small uplift in readers from their new “frictionless” apps, paidContent is told. But how much do these gains really amount to… ?

Since I once worked down the hall from an eye-tracking lab, I was the obvious choice to lead this shopping spree at the nerd candy store. So, we picked 5 different Google SERPs, representing the diversity Google has created in the past couple of years, including the newly expanded site-links. This is the story of those SERPs. They’re all about pizza, because I’m from Chicago and was apparently hungry when I made the list.

UNIFI ist das Akronym für UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme.
Unter der Bezeichnung UNIFI (ISO 20022) hat die Internationale Organisation für Normung (ISO) auf der Basis der XML-Syntax eine Spezifikation für die Finanzwirtschaft herausgegeben. ISO20022 beinhaltet ein logisches Datenmodell - das sogenannte business model - organisationsübergreifende work flows sowie entsprechende Nachrichtentypen. Die Nachrichtentypen stehen als XSD Dateien frei zur Verfügung.

Das Ergebnis ist erschreckend: So kamen die Leiter der Forschungsgruppe, Thomas Noll und Pascal Scherrer, zu dem Ergebnis, dass sich die Händler viel rücksichtsloser, egoistischer und weniger kooperativ als die Psychopathen und die Teilnehmer der Kontrollgruppe gerierten. Noch verblüffender fanden die Wissenschaftler, dass die Händler bei der Performance etwas schlechter abschnitten als die Psychopathen. Jedoch nur bei den absoluten Gewinnen. Bei der Maximierung der relativen Profite lagen sie indes vorn.

That’s essentially what the folks at a small company called Weather Trends International are doing. The private firm based in Bethlehem, PA, uses technology first developed in the early 1990s, to project temperature, precipitation and snowfall trends up to a year ahead, all around the world, with more than 80% accuracy. Translation: they gather up tons and tons of data, literally as much historical information on weather around the world as is out there, and then cram it into some 5.5 million lines of proprietary computer code (their algorithm) to spit out weather forecasts up to a year in advance. This is fairly different from what most meteorologists do by modeling the atmosphere. “Only about 15% of what we do is traditional forecast meteorology,” says CEO Bill Kirk, a former U.S. Air Force Captain with a degree from Rutgers in meteorology. Kirk began working on the WTI algorithm while in the Air Force.

Capital One will begin appearing tomorrow in Zynga games CityVille, FarmVille, and The Pioneer Trail. According to a prepared statement from the companies, it's the first time a brand has advertised in all three Facebook-based games at once.

As social networking proliferates in our daily lives, we can’t ignore the fact that there are some who just use these sites to play online games where they can build and expand their farms or cities or take care or virtual pets, or wage war against other players. This is their form of socialization and with that, some of these players go the extra mile and actually spend real money, just so they can easily upgrade or buy things for their games. People use PayPal or their credit cards to purchase these things and now, more are seeing that there is real money in virtual gold coins.

You can wash your clothes, but only after you've won the Arcade game.

Warum verspielen einzelne Trader immer wieder Milliarden? Für eine Studie hat die Universität St. Gallen Aktienhändler und Psychopathen verglichen. Selbst die Experten waren vom Ergebnis überrascht. Sie bescheinigen den Börsenprofis einen immensen Hang zur Zerstörung.

One of the appeals of a mobile Web solution over native mobile applications is the ability to reach a wider (across multiple platforms) audience. Here are some examples of companies doing just that.

More than 700,000 people use the Financial Times' Web-based mobile application to access news and other content, making it more popular than the version sold in Apple's App Store.

Kendo UI provides everything you need for building modern, interactive, JavaScript applications. In addition to having more than 10 UI widgets, including a Grid, Chart, and ComboBox, Kendo delivers a rich framework for client-side data binding, templating, animation, and drag-and-drop actions. Don't waste time trying to find and use tons of scattered jQuery plug-ins. Kendo UI incorporates a seamless, professionally tested and supported HTML5 toolbox for every project.

Computer haben die Börsen erobert. Sie handeln rasend schnell, in Millisekunden. Starke Kursschwankungen gehören zum neuen Alltag. Der Mensch hält nicht mehr mit.

In his Responsible & Responsive presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville TN, Scott Jehl provided a lot of detailed information about what it takes to deploy a responsive Web design at scale by walking through what he learned on the Boston Globe redesign project.

The top reason worldwide Facebook users stop following a brand is because it is "no longer of interest to me" or "the information available was not interesting." Those are the kind of break-up statements that sting. After all, what brand wants to be boring on the world's most-engaging platform?

As readers of this blog know, I have a keen interest in serious games. Among other virtues, they provide a way to deal with tough circumstances by changing the way team members interact. In an upcoming research document on the subject, I relate the story of a development team that had to rewrite a creaky old application from scratch. Which features did the team need to re-implement right away? By running a serious game with the stakeholders, the team pinpointed which features were essential and why.

Google helps us think, Facebook finds us friends, and Pandora plays our own personalized soundtrack. It's hard to say whether the computer algorithms that these services use to anticipate our needs and wants are turning us into puppets or geniuses. But algorithms have a huge impact on our tastes, buying habits, and decisions about our digital lives.

Here’s what we found, in brief: Women feel vastly underserved. Despite the remarkable strides in market power and social position that they have made in the past century, they still appear to be undervalued in the marketplace and underestimated in the workplace. They have too many demands on their time and constantly juggle conflicting priorities—work, home, and family. Few companies have responded to their need for time-saving solutions or for products and services designed specifically for them.

The social media boom has radically changed how we use the Web. We’ve seen social networks like Facebook and Twitter attract young and old, become key marketing activities for major brands and small businesses alike, and even traditionally solo Web activities become socialized.

In his Responsible & Responsive presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville TN, Scott Jehl provided a lot of detailed information about what it takes to deploy a responsive Web design at scale by walking through what he learned on the Boston Globe redesign project.

As use of mobile devices continues to skyrocket across the globe, we're seeing more ways to tackle the challenge of creating great Web experiences across multiple devices. But which approach is right for any given project? In an effort to help answer that question, I've compiled the reasons we opted to use a dual (separate mobile and desktop) template system to build our start-up,

E-Commerce ist Männersache. Vom Konzept bis zum System machen die Jungs das, was sie für toll und richtig halten. Und ob oder wie gut das dann bei Frauen ankommt, ist erstens nachrangig und zweitens deren Sache. Im Zweifel ist das Internet/der E-Commerce eben eine Männerdomäne - und die Frauen (sind "zu dämlich" und) hinken der (allgemeinen) Entwicklung (einfach mal wieder) hinterher.

What does it take to successfully launch a new product in Germany? Investigating some common perceptions that German consumers do not like innovations and are only concerned about price, that the retail landscape does not support new innovations, or that keeping an innovation alive is more difficult in Germany than in other established markets, Nielsen reveals the key factors for success with new product innovation at the Consumer 360 conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

In his The Cross-Channel Experience presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville TN, Nick Finck outlined the importance of considering all customer touchpoints in your design.

The number of people browsing the Web from a mobile device has more than tripled since 2009, and it is sure to continue growing, with browser platforms such as iOS and Android offering mobile browser support that is almost identical to what we have come to expect from a desktop experience. As the mobile consumer market continues to grow, so will the aspirations of individuals and companies who look to embrace what the mobile Web has to offer.

Frauen können nicht einparken, Männer nicht zuhören. Aus solchen Thesen werden Bestseller gemacht. Die Autoren berufen sich auf die Wissenschaft. Zu Unrecht.

Ein interessantes Schaubild hat Tom Peters in seinen Unterlagen. Es zeigt, wie grundverschieden Frauen und Männer einkaufen. Aufgabe war es, bei Gap ein Paar Hosen zu kaufen.

Facebook ads don’t work for brands
Even with the ability of the user to determine how and to whom an ad is served with great demographic accuracy, Facebook ads have click-through rates of only 0.011-0.165%, compared to Google’s 0.4-0.7%.

Wer nun schon immer mal wissen wollte, welches der 3 Emotionssysteme (Dominanz, Stimulanz und Balance) seinen Körper dominiert, der kann bei „intem“ einen kostenlosen Limbic© Schnelltest machen. Dieser in Kooperation mit Dr. Hans-Georg Häusel entwickelte Test, ermöglicht natürlich nur eine grobe Einschätzung und liefert kein ausgiebiges Persönlichkeitsprofil.

Men, like consumers in general, are far more likely to recommend purchases to family and friends in person than by any other means, according to “The Great Male Survey” conducted by Ipsos OTX Media CT for AskMen.com.

Jens Ehrhardt, Chef der Vermögensverwaltung DJE Kapital in Pullach, sieht die Schuld für die aktuelle Börsenkrise bei den Regierungen. Der renommierte Vermögensverwalter sagte im Interview mit dem Anlegermagazin ‘Börse Online’: "Die Märkte sind politisch manipuliert, daran besteht kein Zweifel." Noch nie sei der Einfluss der Politik so stark zu spüren gewesen wie derzeit. Mittlerweile sei das richtige Timing für Aktienkäufe und -verkäufe fast unmöglich geworden. "Der Grund dafür sind die ständigen Eingriffe der Politik. Sie trägt die Verantwortung für die Schulden- und die Börsenkrise. Denn wenn sich die Regierungschefs äußern, schlägt dies direkt auf die Lage an den Börsen durch." Auf eine Lösung der Krise warte man bislang vergebens.

Die zehn Innovationstypen nach Doblin.

There's no shortage of debate about the best way to develop Web sites that work well across many networked devices. Some teams favor a client-side approach while others lean towards server-side solutions. But I'm increasingly interested in solutions that try to bring together the best of both worlds. RESS (Responsive Web Design + Server Side Components) is one such proposal.

Skeleton is a small collection of CSS & JS files that can help you rapidly develop sites that look beautiful at any size, be it a 17" laptop screen or an iPhone. Skeleton is built on three core principles:

How long is a link “alive” before people stop caring? Does it matter what kind of content it is, or where you shared it? At bitly we see a lot of links, and while every link is special, we’re learning a few general principles that we can share.

Am heutigen Mittwoch trat der Innen- und Rechtsausschuss des Kieler Landtags zusammen, um unter anderem den ULD, repräsentiert durch Thilo Weichert, Sven Thomsen und Dr. Moritz Karg, und Facebook, repräsentiert durch Richard Allan (facebook policy director für Europa, den nahen Osten und Afrika) in Begleitung von Frau Kirschsieper von facebook Deutschland, anzuhören.

Beim gestrigen Gespräch hat Facebook detaillierte Informationen zur Funktionweise des Like Buttons sowie des Nutzer-Loggings beschrieben. Dabei wurde auf die Punkte “Like Button”, “Facebook Pages” und “Europäische Datenschutzrichtlinie” eingegangen.

Some nice insights on mobile web behavior and tips to consider when building a website which shall be responsive.

Vermögensverwalter: Angesichts der augenblicklichen Marktlage ist es schwer, eine langfristige Anlagestrategie zu formulieren. Nicht zuletzt auf Grund der hohen Volatilitäten an den Aktien- und Rentenmärkten sehen wir auf absehbare Zeit die besten Chancen in Unternehmensanleihen (auch mit schlechterem Rating). Unsere Aktienanteile wollen wir weiterhin niedrig halten.

Earlier this month, I was invited to Wharton’s gamification symposium: “For the Win: Serious Gamification.” It was definitely a meeting of the minds with a very diverse group of participants ranging from game designers to policy makers straight from The White House. There were proponents of gamification, and some of the stories are reported on Knowledge@Wharton. Yet, there were also strong critics and opponents of the idea as well (see Gamification is Bullshit). However, the goal is well-intended. We were all there to poke and probe gamification from multiple angles and put it through some of the most rigorous tests. The goal is to figure out what aspects of this idea will actually endure and last.

Das Vertrauen der Leser ist ein kostbares Gut. Aber es ist auch ein knappes Gut. Kann doch jeder im Internet ungeprüft veröffentlichen, was er möchte. Und gibt es zu viele schwarze Schafe, die mehr versprechen, als sie einlösen. Überprüfen Sie Ihre Online-Texte anhand der folgenden Kriterien, wie vertrauenswürdig diese auf Ihre Leser wirken.

It is incredibly important to understand that different kinds of content act in different ways and using different types of content in different areas of your website can drastically influence traffic, sales and conversion rates.

If you read blogs that are even slightly related to tech, you likely hear about HTML5 on a near-weekly basis. Although the new web standard does not do your laundry, it has features that enable the creation of powerful applications—using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript (a Rails back-end can bring additional firepower to the table). This post will go over some key concepts and features of HTML5, setting the stage for more advanced subjects.

All this summer we have been looking at the effectiveness of Facebook for a variety of big brand customers.

Here is what we have discovered, and for Facebook it doesn’t make pretty reading.