Sep 172013
 

facebook

I have been involved in social media since the early days when Facebook was exclusively used by college students. I helped build one of the first and largest social agencies, MRY — now part of Publicis Group. I have since founded a social marketing platform for large brand marketers.

So, how can I view social media as the worst term in marketing when my career has been built upon it? In short, its a misleading term that confuses both consumers and marketers. Heres how:

Its NOT media

Its communication. Its how we communicate with groups of friends, share photos, and make plans. It is also a filter that we use to personalize what we read, watch, listen to, and do. Our social filters are key to achieve relevance in what we consume and how we remove the rapidly expansive noise.

MORE:  Social media: Why its the worst phrase in marketing – iMediaConnection.com.

 

 


 

Sep 162013
 

netflix

Netflix is following the pirates as it chooses content to add to its streaming-video service.

When rolling out its service in the Netherlands, the company looked at what content to offer based in part on what shows were popular on piracy websites. “Prison Break is exceptionally popular on piracy sites,” Kelly Merryman, Netflix’s vice president of content acquisition, told Torrent Freak, a website that tracks news about the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.

Netflix takes the view that it can draw people away from a life of video piracy by offering the same content, only with a better user experience and less risk of legal fallout. Reed Hastings, the company’s chief executive, has said that whenever Netflix is launched in a market, the level of activity on piracy sites drops.

MORE:  Netflix Uses Content Pirates to Help With Programming.

 

 


 

Sep 162013
 

CSS3_logo

In 2013, it’s time to sit back and relax. Modern browsers have several dedicated animation technologies built in, which run at 60 fps. Now is the time to forget about the past and start building UI experiences with tasteful animations that help the user feel at home. I would like to take you on a guided tour of the four animation technologies the modern web has to offer to help you decide which one is right for your project.

Let’s start with the easiest to use declarative technology: CSS3. No need for JavaScript here, just plain old CSS, with a few modern tricks.

CSS can be used to declare animations using two basic properties: transition and animation. The transition property tells the browser to compute intermediate frames between two states, each defined by its own CSS. The animation is triggered when the CSS of the element changes. For example, because you programmatically changed its class or because a :hover CSS has kicked in.

MORE:  Create slick HTML5 animations | Tutorial | .net magazine.

 

 


 

Jul 242013
 

seedling-growth_business

Laurence McCahill from digital product specialists Spook Studio highlights some common early-stage pitfalls, with some guidance on how you can avoid them

1. No clear vision or purpose

This should be the starting point for any startup founder, but it’s often overlooked. Too often people dive straight into their shiny solution ideas without thinking about why they’re doing what they’re doing or considering the change they want to see in the world.

Without a clear purpose, a startup can meander along without much momentum. And when things get tough which they inevitably will, you wont have much to pull you or your team through. Having a clear purpose adds some real meaning to your work, and a cause that people can rally around. It can also give your brand real weight as it has a reason for being, so it’s worth spending time shaping and articulating this. Here are two examples. Notice there’s no mention of a product anywhere:

“To be the pulse of the planet” —Twitter

“To be the earth’s most customer-centric company” —Amazon

MORE10 startup mistakes and how to avoid them | Feature | .net magazine.

 

 


 

Jun 032013
 

 vine1

Android smartphone owners can finally stop trading dirty looks with their iPhone-carrying friends: Twitter’s increasingly popular Vine six-second video and creativity app is finally available on the Android platform.

Vine, which Twitter snapped up late last year has quickly blossomed into a surprisingly versatile (and popular, Twitter reports 13 million users) app for creating not only six second video clips, but also amazing animation creations. The latter capability is all thanks to Vine’s most unique feature: the ability to stop and start recording video with a tap on the screen. Expert users manage to turn six seconds into dozens of taps for smooth, engaging animated tales (see the example below).

To download Vine for Android now, we suggest searching for “Vine Co.” in the Google Play store — it’s been otherwise difficult to locate and it still doesn’t show up as the first result.

MORE:   Vine for Android Finally Arrives.

 

 


 

Jun 032013
 

 facebook

We’ve put together some useful tips on how to create your first Facebook advertising campaign.

If you are a brand that’s new to Facebook advertising, the first thing you’ll need to do is open a business account.

Note: This process is a bit different than opening a private Facebook account and is used solely for business purposes. You can create a business account even if you don’t have a personal Facebook account. To get started, first you need to create a Facebook Page.

Business accounts:

Accounts are not publicly available

Accounts do not have individual profiles

Are used to manage Pages and ad campaigns

First steps:

Create a business account by visiting this link

Once there, choose from six classifications that best suit your business

MORE:   Getting Started: How to Create your First Facebook Ad Campaign

 

 


 

Jun 032013
 

 HTML5_Logo_512

Old habits can die hard. But don’t worry, Paul Wyatt and Joseph Luck are here to guide you through launching a site in HTML – with traditional Flash sensibilities.

For years Flash has been a great creative tool for websites, animation and even broadcast work, but it’s becoming increasingly necessary to look at new ways to build websites and display content.

A key personal motivation behind this tutorial was a folio website, originally designed seven years ago as a showcase of the ‘campaign website’ flavour – with a filing cabinet dropping from the sky and displaying content with animations and transitions in between seemingly everything. Over seven years this website had been updated but failed to keep up with career and work changes, and the demands on it to display different types of content. Something that was easy to update, would work on everything and also serve as a ‘shop window’ for work was required.

But Flash and the showman go hand in hand, and those sensibilities endure. The new site was to have a resizable image-based homepage showcasing full browser width and height images to their best. The aim was for this to rotate and transition from one image to the next and on the sub-homepages have a cut-down version. Clean, bold typography and clear labelling were also key.

MORE:   Apply Flash principles to HTML | Tutorial | .net magazine.

 

 


 

May 292013
 

150px-Ruby_on_Rails.svg

Attackers are exploiting an extremely critical vulnerability in the Ruby on Rails framework to commandeer servers and make them part of a malicious network of hacked machines, a security researcher said.

Ars first warned of the threat in early January, shortly after Rails maintainers issued a patch for the vulnerability. Ars warned at the time that the vulnerability gave attackers the ability to remotely execute malicious code on underlying servers. Criminals’ success in exploiting the bug to make vulnerable machines join a botnet suggests that many server administrators still haven’t installed the critical update more than four months after it was issued.

Servers that have been exploited are infected with software that caused them to join an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel on one of at least two servers, security researcher Jeff Jarmoc said in a post published Tuesday to his personal website. Attackers can force servers to download and execute malicious code and join new IRC channels from there.

MORE:   Critical Ruby on Rails bug exploited in wild, hacked servers join botnet | Ars Technica.

 

 

 

May 292013
 

 random-numbers

I’ve been hearing for years that designers need to learn to code. At first I thought I’d just end up doing two jobs instead of one. But the better I get at coding, the more I understand how connected they are. As a designer in the digital spectrum, you realize that your very work–your material, which exists in the world–is code. How can you design something if you don’t know how it works? So, designers, step into the ring.

THE FIRST PUNCH

I want you to download Processing. It’s a language built on Java and it focuses on images and animation. It’s good for designers because it gives you solid visual feedback about what your code is doing. After you download Processing, I want you to watch the video below. It’s a Processing sketch (a sketch is what the programs are called in Processing), and this is your first gentle punch. The video is about ten minutes long and shows a few simple examples of how to use numbers in different ways in order to make simple shapes on the canvas. Try to follow along with me and type everything out as I do, because I think it’ll help you learn.

MORE:   Designers: Learn To Code! Here’s How To Start | Co.Design: business + innovation + design.

 

 


 

May 292013
 

 facebook

A new scam going around Facebook recently begins with a message to page owners about a new “Fan Page Verification Program.” From there, users are prompted to share their Facebook email and password, which is part of a phishing scam.

Similar to another scam that targeted page admins in the past, the message purports to be from Facebook Security and is designed to trick users into sharing their Facebook login information. This latest scam, detailed by Hoax-Slayer, tells page owners that they qualify for a new security feature and must choose a 10-digit security code by May 30, otherwise their page could be suspended. The message includes a link to a site with form fields for their page URL, email address, password and a “transferring code” of their choice.

MORE:   ‘Fan Page Verification’ scam goes after Facebook page admins.