Category Archives: Content

Some Helpful Advice from a Nitpicky Web Developer

June 2, 2011 – 1:21 pm

Ever heard the phrase “the devil’s in the details?” I’m here to tell you it’s true! For every clean, elegant, and professionally designed website or web application, there are droves of slipshod, sloppy, or just plain lazy pieces of code I encounter every week. What pains me most is that many of these quirks are [...]

By brightmatrix | Also posted in Design, Observations, User Experience, Web Design | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

Where Users Fear to Tread? On the Heels of Great Footers

May 16, 2011 – 12:00 pm

Of all the elements in a modern website, the footer is probably the least appreciated. Users have come to expect basic contact information, privacy policies, and other legal-oriented details to live in the footer, but that doesn’t mean footer designs need to be dull collections of links or tiring repeats of the main navigation. Done [...]

By brightmatrix | Also posted in Design | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Document Metadata, SERPs, and First Impressions: Check Your File Data for Improved Results

April 19, 2011 – 10:23 am

I’m sure you’ve found yourself in this situation before: you turn to search engines like Google or Bing to research a topic and come across rather obscure-looking titles or unhelpful descriptions embedded in the results pages. They could look something like this: What is this stuff, and why is it in your results? The Origins [...]

By brightmatrix | Also posted in How-to, Search | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Social Authority in Search Results and Lessons from the Past

December 11, 2010 – 8:27 am

I read a very interesting article on Mark Schaefer’s blog {Grow} today that discussed some relatively new topics in the search world: “social scoring” and “social authority.” He cited excerpts from interviews with Google and Bing that explain how both search firms are considering changes to their algorithms to account for the influence of content [...]

By brightmatrix | Also posted in Search, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Notes From Edward Tufte’s “Presenting Data and Information” Course

August 4, 2010 – 10:08 am

On July 28, 2009, I attended Edward Tufte’s “Presenting Data and Information” course in Philadelphia. Tufte is well respected for his expertise in data visualization and equally renowned for his complete disdain of PowerPoint as a communications tool. I recently came across a page-and-a-half of handwritten notes I had taken during the lecture and wanted to share elaborations on what I recorded.

By brightmatrix | Also posted in Event Recaps | Tagged , , | Comments (0)