Debbie Hemley recently posted a fun A-Z guide for creating a business presence on Pinterest. Besides showing What Pinterest can do for your business, the article also includes numerous links to more information on tips, several infographics, and statistics that shows benefits of using Pinterest. Lots of good, useful information there.
Understanding Copyright And Licenses
The new article at Smashing Magazine, though aimed at designers, is very helpful for business owners who find copyright issues confusing:
Understanding Copyright And Licenses, by David Bushell
If you are involved in buying images or fonts for the project handled by a professional graphic or web designer, or take on a do-it-yourself project, this article is a must read.
It covers the basic principles that govern copyright and licenses and explores common licenses, with examples. Here is what you will learn: copyright and licensing, what is “fair use,” what is “public domain,” legal jurisdiction, license terminology, Creative Commons, software licenses, where licenses are used, which work need a license.
PCI Fines in Effect
Once a distant threat, something that merchants would not experience until there was a breach, non-PCI compliant fees now become a reality. A growing number of merchant service providers add those fees to merchants’ monthly bills before any cardholder data was compromised.
The PA-DSS Deadline has Passed…Now What?
So, July 1, 2010 passed. Any company that accepts gift, debit, or credit cards on their web site now must use PA-DSS compliant payment applications (a shopping cart is one such application) or face non-compliance fines, warnings from their merchant account provider, and even a possibility to lose the ability to process card payments if the card data is compromised.
Trust thy Designer
It is not always easy to trust your designer. Most of the design process is hidden from you even when you know the steps and are actively involved in discussing them. How can you tell if the designer is giving you their best work if you don’t understand design? Yet trust is mandatory if you want to achieve great results. The process will go more smoothly for both you and the designer when trust is a part of it.
Why The PCI Standards Exist
A short and very well written explanation on how and why PCI standards came to exist. They are important not only for credit card brands but to merchants and buyers as well. It is all about keeping cardholder data secure, no matter where people shop and whom they trust with their information.
Overcome the Google Analytics Learning Curve in 20 Minutes
You know about the importance of analytics, have Google Analytics added to your site, but have a hard time making sense of all those graphs and numbers. Sounds familiar? Danny Dover to the rescue! Just as promised, in 20 minutes or less you will know which features are most important and how often you need to check on them.
How to (and not to) work with a designer
This is a wonderfully thoughtful article about working with a web designer in a way that ensures best results for the client. Although it focuses on design aspects of the web site, all points in this article fully apply to the entire process of building a web site. A lot of people hire designers because they want their site to “look good.” But that’s just scratching the surface of what a designer can and should do. They don’t know what’s possible, so they don’t get the most bang for their buck. Daniel Will-Harris explains why.
Using Analytics to Reach Your Business Goals
There is always a tendency on the part of business owners and stakeholders in the design and development process of a website to simply go ahead and implement what they like or think makes sense to themselves. Vincent Roman explains why using web analytics to monitor the performance of your web site is better than off the cuff changes.
How to change text size in your browser
Did you know that you can resize text in your browser to your personal preferences? This short video explains how to do that in Internet Explorer and Firefox:
Text Resizing in Your Browser – A Visual Guide
If you have to increase text size in your browser regularly, a handy extension for Firefox that will make it easier and even remember your settings for every Web site: NoSquint.