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5 Essentials To Create Your Own Website Presence

Only a website that has a well-established presence can stand out on the internet. Business owners and individuals hire web designers like yourself to create website presences for them. In order to prove yourself, you need to establish your own presence online first. Get to the point where you can showcase your own website during […]

The post 5 Essentials To Create Your Own Website Presence appeared first on Bittbox.




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The webinar software – how it can help you?

A lot of business owners who want to be leaders in the online world know that being unique is a key to achieve success. Today, this future success is definitely the webinar tools that are more and more popular worldwide. This article will tell more about it and how does the webinar room work before, […]

The post The webinar software – how it can help you? appeared first on Bittbox.




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Vert.x ramblings: Asynchronous network, your time has come

With the debut of Vert.x, the asynchronous framework is reaching an inflection point, suggests Andrew Cholakian. With Vert.x, the software is packaged together in such a way as to be extremely practical, he states. For some JVM zealots, Vert.x may meet needs recently and apparently addressed by node.js. Vert.x is an asynchronous application server – Read the rest...








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The Best Free Zoom Backgrounds to Make Your Video Conferencing More Fun

If you’re a remote worker, you may have plenty of experience with video conferencing as a way to communicate with clients, team members, or other colleagues. But with millions of additional...

Click through to read the rest of the story on the Vandelay Design Blog.




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What Does Big Tech Know About You? Basically Everything

Big tech companies have been spying on us for years. This knowledge isn’t new information, but what could be surprising is exactly to what extent each company does it. Security Baron categories what data six of the biggest tech companies collect from you in The Data Big Companies Have On You infographic, and these are just the ones they admit to collecting on their own privacy pages!

The seemingly endless stream of Facebook privacy scandals of late—including the latest involving users as young as 13 years old—may have you questioning how much the social network and other tech giants actually know about you.

The folks at Security Baron examined the privacy policies of Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft and put together a handy infographic showing the types of data each company admits to collecting. For Facebook and others, data is money. But just how much these tech giants actually know about you might be surprising.

As you can see in the infographic below, Facebook is particularly data-hungry, even gathering information about your work, income level, race, religion, political views, and the ads you click in addition to more commonly collected data points such as your phone number, email address, location, and the type of devices you use.

"Facebook is unusually aggressive," Security Baron pointed out. "This data can be exploited by advertisers and (hopefully not nefarious) others."

Twitter, in comparison, is "comparatively hands-off," the site notes. The microblogging service, for instance, doesn't collect your name, gender, or birthday (Facebook, Google, and Microsoft all do), but Twitter does know your phone number, email address, time zone, what videos you watch, and more.

Google and Microsoft, meanwhile, are the other big players when it comes to collecting data.

"With Cortana listening in and Gmail seeing all of your emails, the ubiquitous nature of Google and Microsoft gives them access to an uncomfortably large amount of your information," Security Baron wrote.

Check out the full infographic below to see what Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft may know about you. For tips on securing your digital privacy, check our story, "Online Data Protection 101: Don't Let Big Tech Get Rich Off Your Info.

This is a fairly simple infographic design using a comparison table. I think the use of the icons is particularly effective showing which of Google’s or Microsoft’s apps are collecting the data.

Although the types of data are identified down the left side, I wish there was a way to identify the more sensitive types of data.

Original article can be found at https://www.pcmag.com/




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How Much Does It Really Cost To Produce Your Favorite TV Show?

How Much Does It Really Cost To Produce Your Favorite TV Show? infographic compares the cost to make the show to their ratings on IMDb. Cashnetusa.com comes to the conclusion that, while Game of Thrones paid out the big bucks and received the huge ratings, it isn’t always necessary. Peaky blinders received great reviews and spent 10 million less per episode!

Our new guide to the cost of producing the best and worst rated shows on TV in 2019 reiterates this sense that it’s not always the size of your production budget that counts, but what you do with it. The costly robots of Westworld are rivalled in ratings by the non-union zombies of The Walking Dead for a third of the price; Lost In Space was just as mediocre as the decidedly more earthbound NCIS: New Orleans.

And in the short-term, with the complete series rating hovering around 9.5 on IMDb, Game of Thrones still manages to top our new table as both the highest rated and highest costing show. But when you consider the bitter taste on the tongues of millions of disappointed HBO subscribers, would a more thought-through finale have been a better investment than all that extra cash? Or are GoT fans just sour because (as experts suggest) they’re going through an end-of-show ‘break-up’?

This infographic design does a lot of things right:

  • Good scatterplot data visualization to illustrate their data

  • Data points are clearly identified with data titles using proximity, not connecting lines necessary. This can often be a design challenge!

  • Sources clearly identified with links so anyone can look into the data

  • Use of Creative Commons to protect the infographic and encourage sharing

  • The text on the infographic landing page includes the clickable data source links and a methodology description.

Found on Geekologie.com




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10 diagrams to help you think straight about UX Research

Some of the problems we work on as UX researchers are simple and are easily solved by getting users in front of our product. But other problems can be complex and it's hard to know how to start solving them. In situations like that, a simple 2x2 diagram can cut through the 'what ifs', the 'how abouts' and the edge cases and provide a simple way of looking at the problem. Here are 10 examples of 2x2 diagrams to simplify UX research discussions.




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Fight or Flight: Which Emotion Does Your Website Evoke?

Are you a logical individual? Do you carefully consider all options before making a decision? Are opinions shaped primarily through facts and reasoning? If you answered yes to these questions, you’d be wrong. We are all emotional beings, and our emotions are the root cause of our thoughts and behaviors. Our logical, conscious thoughts simply […]

The post Fight or Flight: Which Emotion Does Your Website Evoke? appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Does your website need to be beautiful?

When I first started designing websites in the 1990s, I focused most of my attention on creating striking visuals. In my defense, I was typically designing gaming website with only the occasional local business… but my goal was always to design a site that looked “cool.” In the early 2000s I stumbled across a website […]

The post Does your website need to be beautiful? appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Why Your Website Doesn’t Generate Leads (and how to fix it)

You’re homepage is beautifully designed. It’s clear all the ways you can help. You’ve articulated why someone should hire you. You’ve validated your claims through case studies and testimonials, yet… You’re not getting the volume of leads you need. Sure they trickle in every month, but it’s not enough to grow your business. What are […]

The post Why Your Website Doesn’t Generate Leads (and how to fix it) appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Hooked: How to engage your website audience in one second or less

You have less than one second to make the right impression. Almost immediately after landing on your website users will make an uninformed, mostly subconscious judgment about what type of organization they’re interacting with. This initial judgment will largely be influenced by layout, design, and visual tone. It will not only influence the rest of […]

The post Hooked: How to engage your website audience in one second or less appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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Why personas are antiquated (and what you should use instead)

Personas are antiquated… this coming from someone who has relied on and written about them for years. For years at 3.7 Designs, we’ve created personas during the design discovery phase. I recently realized that the traditional marketing persona is no longer a relevant practice. The keyword here is “traditional.” At 3.7 we’ve adopted a practice […]

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10 Ways to Get More From Your Website in 2020

It’s a new year, a time of reflection and goal setting. Whether you subscribe to new years resolutions or not, 2020 should be the year you stop neglecting your website. Regardless of how performant your website currently is, it can be do better. You might already know this. You probably realize you should dedicate more […]

The post 10 Ways to Get More From Your Website in 2020 appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.




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9 Best Staging Plugins for Your WordPress Website (Compared)

Are you looking for a good staging plugin to test your experiments before it goes live? A staging site is a replica of your website where you can experiment with new features, plugins, and updates before you push them to your live website. That way you can find and fix bugs without having to worry […]

The post 9 Best Staging Plugins for Your WordPress Website (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.




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For Veterans with TBI and PTSD, Finding Your Best Path in College

Whether taking classes online or finding a seat in a lecture hall that makes you feel safe, Adam shares ideas for vets with TBI and PTSD returning to school.




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Managing Your Money After a Brain Injury

Managing money is complicated, especially for people with a brain injury who may have trouble remembering what they spent or creating a budget. Adam shares some tips from online banking to keeping a spending journal.




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Don't Let Your Diagnosis of TBI and/or PTSD Define You

Adam shares a message of hope to those diagnosed with TBI and/or PTSD: Your life may be different, but you are still the driver and in control.




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Turning Your Life Around After TBI and PTSD

Adam shares an inspiring story about a friend with TBI and PTSD who almost ended his life but instead found the courage to ask for help — even though at the time he may not have known what that help looked like.




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TBI and PTSD: Getting the Help You Need, Now

TBI? PTSD? Both? No matter your diagnosis, Adam says that taking the first steps to get help is what will matter most for a successful recovery.




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BrainLine Military Blogger Adam Anicich Says Thank You and Goodbye for Now

Adam thanks you — his blog viewers and supporters — and encourages you to continue the discussion and awareness raising about TBI and PTSD; the battle does not stop here.




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10 On-Page SEO Factors You Should Consider [2019]

When you want to succeed in the organic search engine results today, you have to focus on your website and learn what you should do to optimize it. There are many factors that can help you with that, form the technical, off-page, and on-page. All these factors and parts of a website require updating and […]

Original post: 10 On-Page SEO Factors You Should Consider [2019]

The post 10 On-Page SEO Factors You Should Consider [2019] appeared first on Daily Blog Tips.




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Best Alexa Skills That Will Actually Surprise You

Technology has changed the way we live. A few decades back, we couldn’t even imagine making a video call to a person sitting in another corner of the world. With every technological advancement, mankind is treading towards greater development. From smart gadgets to machines, every invention has leveraged the human lifestyle.  There’s no doubt in […]

Original post: Best Alexa Skills That Will Actually Surprise You

The post Best Alexa Skills That Will Actually Surprise You appeared first on Daily Blog Tips.




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Create your own bulk actions

Including version 4.6 it was quite difficult to add custom bulk actions to the WordPress admin pages. In version 4.7 […]




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Could you get PTSD from your pandemic experience? The long-term mental health effects of coronavirus

Experiencing intense flashbacks, nightmares, irritability, anger, and fear? In the face of a traumatic event like the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s common to feel this way.




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When Your Veteran Spouse Battles More Than PTSD

For many veterans’ spouses, we’ve watched our partners struggle not only with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but with other mental health conditions, as well. Around 80 percent of people with PTSD wrestle with at least one other co-occurring mental health condition in their lifetime.What many people don’t see is the impact PTSD and comorbidity have on vets’ spouses.




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You Know Clean Air is Good for Your Health. It’s Good for the Economy, Too.

By Rachel Cernansky Ensia When the Clean Air Act of 1970 became law, members of the business community in the United States responded with opposition. Such regulations are a drag on growth, some economists say, for individual businesses and for … Continue reading




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Elizabeth Gilbert: The Art of Being Yourself

Brace yourself for a TRULY powerful episode with the bestselling author and creative genius, Elizabeth Gilbert. Although best known for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love–which went on to sell over 12 million copies and became a film staring Julia Roberts—she’s also one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world… The whole world. Spend some time with her in your ears on today’s podcast and you’ll know why in under a minute…   In this episode, we cover How Liz considers mental health her full time job, and writing / being a professional creator is a hobby.  How the only way out of pain is through honesty. Liz shares her experiences working through the loss of her partner to cancer. The things we won’t even admit to ourselves will cause us pain, even to the point of mental and physical breakdown Her latest INCREDIBLE novel called City of Girls (…a “delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person”) Why mercy is the foundation to any creative endeavor. How creativity and writing can be a tool to slow the mind during hard times. And […]

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Intuition, Creative Freedom & Doing What You Love with Chris Ballew

Today’s episode is going to rock your world … pun fully intended because today’s guest is an actual rock star. You may remember a band called Presidents of the United States of America. They took the world by storm in 1995 with their self titled album, Presidents of the United States of America playing songs like Lump and Peaches. Yes, that’s right. My guest today is frontman Chris Ballew. Chris and I have been friends for years, including collaborating on a music video together and at least one live performance (gotta listen to find out ;). Of course we get into his musical journey, a meteoric rise to success, and then realizing something was missing. We take some deep dives into Chris’ creative process, including his method for capturing his small bits and later using those to write new works, including his new project Casper Babypants. In this episode: Consider what kind of artist you are and how you relate to other artists. For years Chris played in bands, but what he learned about himself is his work is actually solo. Don’t censor yourself while you’re creating. Get it out, no matter how crazy or ridiculous or unusual and then […]

The post Intuition, Creative Freedom & Doing What You Love with Chris Ballew appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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How to Build Your Brand /w Ben Von Wong

Back in 2012, budding photographer Ben Von Wong stopped by my photo studio in Seattle to say hello. Fast forward to present day and he’s making headlines working with some of the world’s largest brands like Nike and IBM, create work that combines art & activism. His work has been featured numerous times on Buzzfeed, Gizmodo, Mashable and the Huffington Post to name a few. So when he stopped by the CreativeLive studios not too long ago, I wanted to pick his brain one of the most common questions I get on how to stand out and build a personal brand. In this episode: Put work in your portfolio you want to be hired to do. If you shoot weddings and also muscle cars, consider separate sites. One of Ben’s main considerations for helping his project spread? Create with the headline in mind. Ben shares a little about his process to discover his unique style and thumbprint to his work. Enjoy! FOLLOW BEN: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, […]

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How To Get UN-STUCK From Anything in Life That’s Got You Down [with Lewis Howes]

Ever felt STUCK with something in your life? Blocked, like you can’t get past this mental state, this hurdle, this creative block, this bad habit, this… Wait a minute. Why am I even asking that question? Of course you’ve been stuck before. We’ve literally ALL been stuck before. And by extension we all know how much it sucks to be in this state of mind. AND – on the flipside – how amazing it is when you can reclaim your life and get back to the things you want to be thinking, doing, and becoming. I’m obsessed with overcoming the mental blockers that try to keep me down – and I think it’s been a big piece of my personal success. Which is why I thought this little nugget might help. ENTER: Lewis Howes. My good friend Lewis Howes was in the studio shooting his newest CreativeLive course last week and I was able to snag him for a few minutes to chat about his new book and his amazingly simple, yet powerful process for reclaiming our lives and live our biggest dreams. In this episode, Lewis shares a powerful experience from his life and how- on reflection – it helped […]

The post How To Get UN-STUCK From Anything in Life That’s Got You Down [with Lewis Howes] appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.




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Design Your Life with Creative Calling + Debbie Millman

Debbie Millman is one of my dear friends, a powerhouse creative and someone who inspires me every day. When I was developing my online companion class to the Creative Calling book, of course I had to ask Debbie to join me on stage for a conversation around designing our life with intention. Debbie’s insight is pure gold. AND – this is just one of the segments from the class. If you already have my book, you can access the entire class for free. All you need to do is visit www.creativelive.com/creativecalling and sign up there. Enjoy! FOLLOW DEBBIE: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Dan Pink: If You Believe In It. Share It.

Dan Pink is a bestselling author and was the host & co-executive producer of “Crowd Control”, a television series about human behavior on National Geographic. He’s appeared frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV/radio networks worldwide. His provocative books include Drive, A Whole New Mind, To Sell is Human, and his latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. I love Dan’s books. He’s a ruthlessly practical thinker and in this episode he doesn’t hold back. We get into: How to see trends or unlikely connections across by absorbing and learning from a wide variety of sources, whether that’s audio programs, books, documentaries, or episodes of Silicon Valley. Using lists to track influences, sources, and even random ideas or curiosities to spark new ideas Selling isn’t a dirty word, it’s required to get our ideas out there. If we believe in our work, we have a moral obligation to share it. and so much more… Enjoy! FOLLOW DAN: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make […]

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Chris Burkard: Say Yes to What You Want

Today’s guest is one many of you have been asking for oh-so-long. He’s one of the top travel, outdoor, and landscape photographers in the world, bringing us to some of the most untamed and powerful landscapes in the pursuit of powerful stories, hidden surf, and a good adventure. Of course in this episode we get into his new book, At Glacier’s End, but we also get into some meaty topics such as: the power of exploring personal projects and how it can shape new opportunities the sacrifice that comes as pursing your passions personal growth and how it evolves over time and so much more Enjoy! FOLLOW CHRIS: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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There Is Only One You with Clemency Burton-Hill

There are 7106 languages on earth and yet there are a few universal languages that transcends the language barrier. In this episode we explore one of the first universal languages of human history: music. My guest today is Clemency Burton-Hill. From underground DJ to the Creative Director at New York Public Radio, she is an author, a musician, and host of multiple podcasts including The Open Ears Project, Classical Fix, and Moments that Made Me. Her latest book, Year of Wonder helps readers explore and experience a new classical musical piece every day. In this episode: Classical music has a bad rap for being stuffy, boring, and largely inaccessible. Clemency expands on what’s available, and how it’s really the soundtrack of our lives. The universality of music and how we use music to explore, express, and share. Of course, Clemency drops so many names of musical artists to explore who are crushing it today. Enjoy! FOLLOW CLEMENCY: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast  Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in […]

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You Are Not Your Ego with Cheri Huber and Ashwini Narayanan

Cheri has been a student and teacher of Zen for over 35 years. She is the author of over 20 books on Zen, and founded the Mountain View Zen Center and the Zen Monastery Peace Center. Cheri also founded a non-profit dedicated to transforming lives and ending suffering, Living Compassion, whose primary work is the Africa Vulnerable Children Project in Zambia. Ashwini co-facilitates and creates workshops with Cheri. She runs the operations of the two nonprofits that Cheri founded. Her eclectic background includes degrees in physics, business, and computer science to working in advertising, an investment bank, a social enterprise, and several technology startups in the Silicon Valley. Cheri and Ashwini have co-written multiple books, including their latest Don’t Suffer, Communicate. Today’s episode isn’t just about awareness practice, it’s about a framework for navigating life. A few highlights: Zen isn’t just the practice of keeping things nicely organized, it’s also a spiritual practice largely focused on awareness and where you direct attention. Self-improvement is an endless diss. The very nature of saying we need improvement implies we’re not enough. Cheri and Ashwini share some useful tools to redirect the attention, such as using a recorder to access the wisdom, love, and compassion that is […]

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Pay Attention to What Ignites You with Jody MacDonald

Imagine this: Your job is good, and safe, but it’s not fueling you anymore. You decide to quit your “real” job and sell all your belongings to live a life of adventure. And just as you are waving your last goodbye, the unthinkable happens and it changes everything. Like most of us, award winning photographer Jody MacDonald didn’t know what her path would be. Yet when her wake up call came, she listened. From train hopping in the Sahara to paragliding in the Himalaya, she’s no stranger to adventure and exploration. Her work blends insightful storytelling, big adventure expeditions and social change in the hopes of promoting the preservation of wild places. Men’s Journal named her “One of the 25 Most Adventures Women in the Past 25 Years and National Geographic said she’s one of the top female adventure photographers pushing the limits. I’ve admired Jody’s work from afar for years. Her life story and career arc is remarkable. It set her on a path to tackle some of the life’s biggest questions and what she has learned is pure gold. In this episode: Why waste your time on things that make you unhappy? What Jody does to tune into […]

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Create the Change You Seek with Jonah Berger

Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and internationally bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. Dr. Berger is a world-renowned expert on change, word of mouth, influence, consumer behavior, and how products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. He has published over 50 articles in top‐tier academic journals, teaches Wharton’s highest rated online course, and popular outlets like The New York Times and Harvard Business Review often cover his work. He’s keynoted hundred of events, and often consults for organizations like Google, Apple, Nike, and the Gates Foundation. Enjoy! FOLLOW JONAH: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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How to Find Yourself with Glennon Doyle

Very excited to have my friend, truth-teller, and Bestselling Author, Glennon Doyle back on the show. Her newly released book, UNTAMED, is a powerful memoir and wake-up call about being forged in the fire of anger, heartbreak, and discontent to finally finding yourself. In this episode, we’re coming to you LIVE from our living rooms to chat about how to listen to the inner voice and take control of your life. If you’re not familiar with Glennon’s work, she is the bestselling author of many books including LOVE WARRIOR, which was selected as an Oprah’s Book Club pick, as well as the New York Times bestseller CARRY ON, WARRIOR. An activist and thought leader, Glennon was named among SuperSoul100’s inaugural group of “awakened leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.” She is the founder and president of Together Rising, an all-women led nonprofit organization that has revolutionized grassroots philanthropy – raising over $20 Million for women, families and children in crisis. She lives in Florida with her wife and three children. Enjoy! FOLLOW GLENNON: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive […]

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Make It Til You Make It with Owen Smith

If you happened to come across a Youtube video I put out not too long ago featuring Owen Smith, you’ll know the backstory how we connected for this episode of the Chase Jarvis LIVE show. Of course, we hoped to meet in person, but for now we’re coming LIVE to you from our living rooms. Owen Smith is a comedian, actor, writer, and the creator of a new YouTube show: Notebooks. He has performed stand-up on Conan, Colbert and is a regular at the Comedy Store Hollywood and Comedy Cellar in New York. He’s written for shows such as ABC’s Black•ish, Survivor’s Remorse (Starz), The Arsenio Hall Show, The ESPY’s (on ESPN with Drake and ABC with Joel McHale), The Guy’s Choice Awards, Whitney(NBC), Deon Cole’s Black Box (TBS), Are We There Yet (TBS), and Everybody Hates Chris. In this episode, we explore Owen’s Notebook project (so good!) and go deep into growing and developing as an artist, putting work into the world, learning to trust your instincts, finding the right time/place for your ideas, and so much more. Definitely check out his new show Notebooks. So relatable and funny for any creator. Enjoy! FOLLOW OWEN: instagram | twitter | […]

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Do What You Can Do with Cellist Joshua Roman

Legendary musician Yo-Yo Ma called my guest today the future of classical music in America. Joshua Roman is a cellist, accomplished composer and curator whose performances embrace musical styles from Bach to Radiohead. At 22, he became the youngest principal cellist in the Seattle Symphony. Now as a soloist, his performances have been viewed by millions. I was able to catch up with Joshua on this special LIVE performance CreativeLive TV. Wherever you are in the world, hope this episode lifts you up. Please be sure to give Joshua a shout on the socials. Enjoy! FOLLOW JOSHUA: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

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Unsolved Zoom Mysteries: Why We Have to Say “You’re Muted” So Much

Video conference tools are an indispensable part of the Plague Times. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and their compatriots are keeping us close and connected in a physically distanced world.

As tech-savvy folks with years of cross-office collaboration, we’ve laughed at the sketches and memes about vidconf mishaps. We practice good Zoomiquette, including muting ourselves when we’re not talking.

Yet even we can’t escape one vidconf pitfall. (There but for the grace of Zoom go I.) On nearly every vidconf, someone starts to talk, and then someone else says: “Oop, you’re muted.” And, inevitably: “Oop, you’re still muted.”

That’s right: we’re trying to follow Zoomiquette by muting, but then we forget or struggle to unmute when we do want to talk.

In this post, I’ll share my theories for why the You’re Muted Problems are so pervasive, using Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom as examples. Spoiler alert: While I hope this will help you be more mindful of the problem, I can’t offer a good solution. It still happens to me. All. The. Time.

Skip the why and go straight to the vidconf app keyboard shortcuts you should memorize right now.

Why we don't realize we’re muted before talking

Why does this keep happening?!?

Simply put: UX and design decisions make it harder to remember that you’re muted before you start to talk.

Here’s a common scenario: You haven’t talked for a bit, so you haven’t interacted with the Zoom screen for a few seconds. Then you start to talk — and that’s when someone tells you, “You’re muted.”

We forget so easily in these scenarios because when our mouse has been idle for a few seconds, the apps hide or downplay the UI elements that tell us we’re muted.

Zoom and Teams are the worst offenders:

  • Zoom hides both the toolbar with the main in-app controls (the big mute button) and the mute status indicator on your video pane thumbnail.
  • Teams hides the toolbar, and doesn't show a mute status indicator on your video thumbnail in the first place.

Meet is only slightly better:

  • Meet hides the toolbar, and shows only a small mute status icon in your video thumbnail.

Even when our mouse is active, the apps’ subtle approach to muted state UI can make it easy to forget that we’re muted:

Teams is the worst offender:

  • The mute button is an icon rather than words.
  • The muted-state icon's styling could be confused with unmuted state: Teams does not follow the common pattern of using red to denote muted state.
  • The mute button is not differentiated in visual hierarchy from all the other controls.
  • As mentioned above, Teams never shows a secondary mute status indicator.

Zoom is a bit better, but still makes it pretty easy to forget that you’re muted:

  • Pros:
    • Zoom is the only app to use words on the mute button, in this case to denote the button action (rather than the muted state).
    • The muted-state icon’s styling (red line) is less likely to be confused with the unmuted-state icon.
  • Cons:
    • The mute button’s placement (bottom left corner of the page) is easy to overlook.
    • The mute button is not differentiated in visual hierarchy from the other toolbar buttons — and Zoom has a lot of toolbar buttons, especially when logged in as host.
    • The secondary mute status indicator is a small icon.
    • The mute button’s muted-state icon is styled slightly differently from the secondary mute status indicator.
  • Potential Cons:
    • While words denote the button action, only an icon denotes the muted state.

Meet is probably the clearest of the three apps, but still has pitfalls:

  • Pros:
    • The mute button is visually prominent in the UI: It’s clearly differentiated in the visual hierarchy relative to other controls (styled as a primary button); is a large button; and is placed closer to the center of the controls bar.
    • The muted-state icon’s styling (red fill) is less likely to be confused with the unmuted-state icon.
  • Cons:
    • Uses only an icon rather than words to denote the muted state.
  • Unrelated Con:
    • While the mute button is visually prominent, it’s also placed next to the hang-up button. So in Meet’s active state you might be less likely to forget you’re muted … but more likely to accidentally hang up when trying to unmute. 😬

I know modern app design leans toward minimalism. There’s often good rationale to use icons rather than words, or to de-emphasize controls and indicators when not in use.

But again: This happens on basically every call! Often multiple times per call!! And we’re supposed to be tech-savvy!!! Imagine what it’s like for the tens of millions of vidconf newbs.

I would argue that “knowing your muted state” has turned out to be a major vidconf user need. At this point, it’s certainly worth rethinking UX patterns for.

Why we keep unsuccessfully unmuting once we realize we’re muted

So we can blame the You’re Muted Problem on UX and design. But what causes the You’re Still Muted Problem? Once we know we’re muted, why do we sometimes fail to unmute before talking again?

This one is more complicated — and definitely more speculative. To start making sense of this scenario, here’s the sequence I’m guessing most commonly plays out (I did this a couple times before I became aware of it):

The crucial part is when the person tries to unmute by pressing the keyboard Volume On/Off key.

If that’s in fact what’s happening (again, this is just a hypothesis), I’m guessing they did that because when someone says “You’re muted” or “I can’t hear you,” our subconscious thought process is: “Oh, Audio is Off. Press the keyboard key that I usually press when I want to change Audio Off to Audio On.”

There are two traps in this reflexive thought process:

First, the keyboard volume keys control the speaker volume, not the microphone volume. (More specifically, they control the system sound output settings, rather than the system sound input settings or the vidconf app’s sound input settings.)

In fact, there isn’t a keyboard key to control the microphone volume. You can’t unmute your mic via a dedicated keyboard key, the way that you can turn the speaker volume on/off via a keyboard key while watching a movie or listening to music.

Second, I think we reflexively press the keyboard key anyway because our mental model of the keyboard audio keys is just: Audio. Not microphone vs. speaker.

This fuzzy mental model makes sense: There’s only one set of keyboard keys related to audio, so why would I think to distinguish between microphone and speaker? 

So my best guess is hardware design causes the You’re Still Muted Problem. After all, keyboard designs are from a pre-Zoom era, when the average person rarely used the computer’s microphone.

If that is the cause, one potential solution is for hardware manufacturers to start including dedicated keys to control microphone volume:

Video conference keyboard shortcuts you should memorize right now

Let me know if you have other theories for the You’re Still Muted Problem!

In the meantime, the best alternative is to learn all of the vidconf app keyboard shortcuts for muting/unmuting:

  • Meet
    • Mac: Command(⌘) + D
    • Windows: Control + D
  • Teams
    • Mac: Command(⌘) + Shift + M
    • Windows: Ctrl + Shift + M
  • Zoom
    • Mac: Command(⌘) + Shift + A
    • Windows: Alt + A
    • Hold Spacebar: Temporarily unmute

Other vidconf apps not included in my analysis:

  • Cisco Webex Meetings
    • Mac: Ctrl + Alt + M
    • Windows: Ctrl + Shift + M
  • GoToMeeting

Bonus protip from Jackson Fox: If you use multiple vidconf apps, pick a keyboard shortcut that you like and manually change each app’s mute/unmute shortcut to that. Then you only have to remember one shortcut!




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So You've Written a Bad Design Take

So you’ve just written a blog post or tweet about why wireframes are becoming obsolete, the dangers of “too accessible” design, or how a certain style of icon creates “cognitive fatigue.”

Your post went viral, but now you’re getting ratioed by rude people on the Internet. That sucks! You were just trying to start a conversation and you probably didn’t deserve all that negativity (except for you, “too accessible” guy).

Most likely, you made one of these common mistakes:

1. You made generalizations about “design”

You, a good user-centered designer, know that you are not your user. Nor are you every designer.

First of all, let's acknowledge that there is no universal definition of design. Even if we narrow it down to software design, it’s still hard to make generalizations. Agency, in-house, product, startup, enterprise, non-profit, website, app, connected hardware, etc. – there are a lot of different work contexts and cultures for people with “designer” in their titles.

"The Design Industry" is not a thing, but even if it were, you don't speak for it. Don’t assume that the kind of design work you do is the universal default.

2. You didn’t share enough context

There are many great design books and few great design blog posts. (There are, to my knowledge, no great design tweets, but I am open to your suggestions.) Writing about design is not well suited to short formats, because context plays such an important role and there’s always a lot of it to cover.

Writing about your work should include as much context as you would include if you were presenting your portfolio for a job interview. What kind of organization did you work for? Who was your client and/or your stakeholders? What was the goal of the project? Your timeline? What was the makeup of your team? What were the notable business rules and constraints? How are you defining effectiveness and success?

Without these kinds of details, it’s not possible for other designers to know if what you’ve written is credible or applicable to them.

3. You were too certain

A blog post doesn’t need to be a dissertation. It’s okay to share hunches and anecdotes, but give the necessary caveats. And if you're making claims about science, bruh, you gotta cite your sources.

Be humble in your takes. Your account of what worked for you and why is more valuable to your peers than making sweeping claims and reheating the same old arguments. Be prepared to be told you’re wrong, and have the humility to realize that your perspective is just your perspective. Real conversations, like good design, are built on feedback and diverse viewpoints.

Together, we can improve the discourse in our information ecosystems. Don't generalize. Give context. Be humble.




you

Should you use Userbase for your next static site?

During the winter 2020 Pointless Weekend, we built TrailBuddy (working app coming soon). Our team consisted of four developers, two project managers, two front-end developers, a digital-analyst, a UXer, and a designer. In about 48 hours, we took an idea from Jeremy Field’s head to a (mostly) working app. We broke up the project in two parts:. First, a back-end that crunches trail, weather, and soil data. That data is exposed via a GraphQL API for a web app to consume.

While developers built the API, I built a static front end using Next.js. Famously, static front-ends don’t have a database, or a concept of “users.” A bit of functionality I wanted to add was saving favorite trails. I didn’t want to be hacky about it, I needed some way to add users and a database. I knew it’d be hard for the developers to set this up as part of the API, they had their hands full with all the #soil-soil-soil-soil-soil (a slack channel dedicated solely to figuring out our soil data problem—those were plentiful.) I had been looking for an excuse to use Userbase, and this seemed like as good a time as any.

A textbook Userbase use case

“When would I use it?” The Usebase site lists these reasons:

  • If you want to build a web app without writing any backend code.
  • If you never want to see your users' data.
  • If you're tired of dealing with databases.
  • If you want to radically simplify your GDPR compliance.
  • And if you want to keep things really simple.

This was a perfect fit for my problem. I didn’t want to write any more backend code for this. I didn’t want to see our user’s data, I don’t care to know anyone’s favorite trails.* A nice bonus to not having users in our backend was not having to worry about keeping their data safe. We don’t have their data at all, it’s end-to-end encrypted by Userbase. We can offer a reasonable amount of privacy for free (well for the price of using Userbase: $49 a year.) I am not tired of dealing with databases, but I’d rather not. I don’t think anyone doesn’t want to simplify their GDPR compliance. Finally, given our tight timeline I wanted nothing more than to keep things really simple.

A sign up form that I didn't have to write a back-end for

Using Userbase

Userbase can be tried for free, so I set aside thirty minutes or so to do a quick proof of concept to make sure this would work out for us. I made an account and followed their Quickstart. Userbase is a fundamentally easy tool to use, but their quickstart is everything I’d want out of a quickstart:

  • Written in the most vanilla way possible (just HTML and vanilla JS). This means I can adapt it to my needs, in this case React using Next.js
  • Easy to follow, it does the most barebones tour of the functionality you can expect to get out of the SDK (software development kit.) In other words it is quick and it is a start
  • It has a live demo and code samples you can download and run yourself

It didn’t take long after that to integrate Userbase into our app with more help from their great docs. I debated whether to add code samples of what we did here, and I didn’t because any reader would be better off using the great quickstart and docs Userbase provides—they are that clear, and that good. Depending on your use case you’ll need to adapt the examples to your needs, for us the trickiest things were creating a top level authentication context to manage users in the app, and a custom hook to encapsulate all the logic for setting, updating, and deleting favourite trails in the app. Userbase’s SDK worked seamlessly for us.

A log in form that I didn't have to write a back-end for

Is Userbase for you?

Maybe. I am definitely a fan, so much so that this blog post probably reads like an advert. Userbase saved me a ton of time in this project. It reminded me of “The All Powerful Front End Developer” talk by Chris Coyer. I don’t fully subscribe to all the ideas in that talk, but it is nice to have “serverless” tools like Userbase, and all the new JAMstacky things. There are limits to the Userbase serverless experience in terms of scale, and control. Obviously relying on a third party for something always carries some (probably small) risk—it’s worth noting Usebase includes a note on their pricing page that says “You can host it yourself always under your control, or we can run it for you for a full serverless experience”—Still, I wouldn’t hesitate this to use in future projects.

One of the great things about Viget and Pointless Weekend is the opportunity to try new things. For me that was Next.js and Userbase for Trailbuddy. It doesn’t always work out (in fact this is my first pointless weekend where a risk hasn’t blown up in my face) but it is always fun. Getting to try out Userbase and beginning to think about how we may use it in the future made the weekend worthwhile for me, and it made my job on this project much more enjoyable.

*I will write a future post about privacy conscious analytics in TrailBuddy when I’ve figured that out. I am looking into Fathom Analytics for that.



  • Code
  • Front-end Engineering

you

Global Gitignore Files Are Cool and So Are You

Setting it up

First, here's the config setup you need to even allow for such a radical concept.

  1. Define the global gitignore file as a global Git configuration:

    git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore
    

    If you're on OSX, this command will add the following config lines in your ~/.gitconfig file.

    [core]
      excludesfile = /Users/triplegirldad/.gitignore
    
  2. Load that ~/.gitignore file up with whatever you want. It probably doesn't exist as a file yet so you might have to create it first.

Harnessing its incredible power

There are only two lines in my global gitignore file and they are both fairly useful pretty much all the time.

$ cat ~/.gitignore
TODO.md
playground

This 2 line file means that no matter where I am, what project I'm working on, where in the project I'm doing so, I have an easy space to stash notes, thoughts, in progress ideas, spikes, etc.

TODO.md

More often than not, I'm fiddling around with a TODO.md file. Something about writing markdown in your familiar text editor speaks to my soul. It's quick, it's easy, you have all the text editing tricks available to you, and it never does anything you wouldn't expect (looking at you auto-markdown-formatting editors). I use one or two # for headings, I use nested lists, and I ask for nothing more. Nothing more than more TODO.md files that is!

In practice I tend to just have one TODO.md file per project, right at the top, ready to pull up in a few keystrokes. Which I do often. I pull this doc up if:

  • I'm in a meeting and I just said "oh yeah that's a small thing, I'll knock it out this afternoon".
  • I'm halfway through some feature development and realize I want to make a sweeping refactor elsewhere. Toss some thoughts in the doc, and then get back to the task at hand.
  • It's the end of the day and I have to switch my brain into "feed small children" mode, thus obliterating everything work-related from my short term memory. When I open things up the next day and know exactly what the next thing to dive into was.
  • I'm preparing for a big enough refactor and I can't hold it all in my brain at once. What I'd give to have an interactive 3D playground for brain thoughts, but in the meantime a 2D text file isn't a terrible way to plan out dev work.

playground

Sometimes you need more than some human words in a markdown file to move an idea along. This is where my playground directory comes in. I can load this directory up with code that's related to a given project and keep it out of the git history. Because who doesn't like a place to play around.

I find that this directory is more useful for long running maintenance projects over fast moving greenfield ones. On the maintenance projects, I tend to find myself assembling a pile of scripts and experiments for various situations:

  • The client requests a one-time obscure data export. Whip up some CSV generation code and save that code in the playground directory.
  • The client requests a different obscure data export. Pull up the last time you did something vaguely similar and save yourself the startup time.
  • A batch of data needs to be imported just once. Might as well stash that in the chance that "just once" is actually "just a few times".
  • Kicking the tires on an integration with a third party service.

Some of these playground files end up being useful more times than I can count (eg: the ever-changing user_export.rb script). Some items get promoted into application code, which is always fun. But most files here serve their purpose and then wither away. And that's fine. It's a playground, anything goes.

Wrapping up

Having a personal space for project-specific notes and code has been helpful to me over the years as a developer on multiple projects. If you have your own organizational trick, or just want to brag about how you memorize everything without any markdown files, let me know in the comments below!




you

Building Your Website All Alone

Whether you have created a brand new company, or you’ve been around for a long time, if you do not already have a website, you are going to have to put one up as soon as humanly possible. According to the website Mashable, online shopping accounted for $231 billion in sales in 2012. This means …

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Limiting your options on purpose

Being a photographer with some spending money and a bad habit of lusting after gear, I have amassed a lot of photo gear. Due to that I am often carrying at least two lenses and also prefer zoom lenses versus […]