Prepado para una entrevista de trabajo? Sos Desarrollador Web? hacé tu checklist – @codejobs

Preguntas generales:

¿Qué sistemas de control de versiones ha usado (Subversion, Git, etc.)?
¿Cuál es su ambiente de desarrollo favorito (Sistema Operativo, Editor de Texto, Navegadores, Herramientas, etc.)?
¿Puede describir el proceso que sigue cuando crea una página web?
¿Puede describir la diferencia entre «Progressive Enhancement» y «Graceful Degradation»?
- Puntos extra si el entrevistado menciona «detección de capacidades».
Explique qué significa «HTML Semántico».
¿Cuál es el navegador que utiliza principalmente para el desarrollo y qué herramientas de desarrollo usa?
¿Cómo optimiza los recursos de una web?
- Se espera una lista respuestas tales como:
  - Concatenación de archivos
  - Compresión (minificación) de archivos
  - Utilizar un CDN
  - Caching
  - etc.
¿Por qué es mejor utilizar varios dominios para distribuir los recursos de una página web?
- ¿Cuántos recursos se pueden descargar simultáneamente de un mismo dominio?
Mencione tres formas para disminuir el tiempo de carga de una página (tiempo real o percibido).
Si se ha unido a un proyecto y los desarrolladores usan tabs y usted usa espacios, ¿qué hace?
- Sugerir que el proyecto utilice algo como EditorConfig (http://editorconfig.org)
- Mantener la convención establecida y utilizar tabs.
- Utilizar el comando :retab!
Escriba un página con una galería sencilla.
- Puntos extra si no usa JavaScript.
¿Qué herramientas usa para probar el rendimiento de su código?
- JSPerf (http://jsperf.com/)
- Dromaeo (http://dromaeo.com/)
- Entre otras.
Si pudiera elegir una tecnología para dominar este año, ¿cuál sería?
Explique la importancia de estándares y los grupos que los definen.
¿Sabe que es el FOUC? ¿Cómo lo evita?

Preguntas específicas de HTML

Preguntas específicas de JavaScript

Expanding Universal Analytics into Public Beta

A typical consumer today uses multiple devices to surf the web and interact in many ways with your business. For most large businesses, already swimming in many sources of data, it’s an enormous challenge, but also an incredible opportunity.

Back in October, we announced the limited beta release of Universal Analytics as a way for businesses to understand the changing, multi-device customer journey. Today, we’re excited to welcome and invite all Google Analytics customers to try Universal Analytics.

The benefits of using Universal Analytics to businesses are:

Understanding how customers interact with your businesses across many devices and touch-points,
Insights into the performance of your mobile apps,
Improvements of lead generation and ROI by incorporating offline and online interactions so you can understand which channels drive the best results,
Improved latency on your site by reducing client-side demands.

Testimonials from the initial beta release

Our initial beta customers using Universal Analytics and are pleased with their results. Rojeh Avanesian, VP of Marketing at PriceGrabber.com reports:«At PriceGrabber, we know it’s important to understand consumer shopping behavior so we can provide a more customized experience to our users. Google’s Universal Analytics will solve this problem for us and many sites that are facing this challenge and help us serve our users better by providing them with more relevant content and shopping results. We can use Google Analytics’ metrics to segment our users in a way that improves and simplifies the shopping experience for consumers. That’s what we strive for at PriceGrabber, to make shopping and saving money as easy as possible.»

How to get started using Universal Analytics

If you’re new to Google Analytics, you can choose Universal Analytics when you setup your account. Already using Google Analytics? Create a new web property in your Google Analytics account to set up Universal Analytics and explore the new features.

Here’s what you’ll see when you create a new web property. Select the Universal Analytics column to get the new analytics.js code snippet you can implement on your website:

You can implement Universal Analytics with the new analytics.js JavaScript for websites, our iOSand Android SDKs for apps, and the new Measurement Protocol for all other platforms.

Find more details on how to set up using our help center or developer guide. (Migration guides for properties using ga.js coming soon. Until then, set up a new property in your account for Universal Analytics).

To tag in the most flexible way possible, you can also take advantage of the Universal Analytics template available in Google Tag Manager, which allows you to make additional changes and enable new features to your analytics setup without changing the hard-coded tags on your website. Learn more about how to implement Universal Analytics through Google Tag Manager.

For more information on Universal Analytics, visit our help center and developer guides.

Happy analyzing – in the new and innovative ways you can with Universal Analytics!

Posted by JiaJing Wang, Product Manager, Google Analytics

SafeFrame – thnxz @iab

The SafeFrame 1.0 technology is a managed API-enabled iframe that opens a line of communication between the publisher page content and the iframe-contained external content, such as ads. Because of this line of communication, content served into a SafeFrame is afforded data collection and rich interaction, such as ad expansion, that is unavailable in a standard iframe.

To avoid disruptive ad behavior and the potential security risks of serving ads inline with the page, publishers may choose to have ad content served into an iframe.

An iframe is a sort of mini HTML page within the publisher-hosted page. Using the iframe, ad content is sequestered within the boundaries of the iframe and unable to access any information about the page where it is served. Without access to page content, ad content within the iframe cannot expand, interact dynamically with site visitors, or collect any data necessary in determining ad effectiveness.

The iframe solution protects the publisher, but it also limits ad capabilities and decreases the value of inventory that is restricted to iframes.

Download the full SafeFrame 1.0 Spec

SafeFrame’s API-enabled iframe opens a line of communication between webpage code and the ad content in a controlled and transparent way. This communication allows for rich interaction while protecting the publisher’s page from undetected changes that might otherwise damage page integrity.
Some key benefits of SafeFrame for digital advertising include:

Continuar leyendo «SafeFrame – thnxz @iab»

Write a Twitter Bot in 5 Minutes – Thnxz to @labnol – Amit Agarwal

Meet @DearAssistant, a Twitter bot that is like a mini version of Siri. You can tweet your questions in plan English and the bot will reply with an answer.

The Twitter bot is internally using Wolfram Alpha so there’s a whole range of questions that it can answer. Here are some questions that people have asked @DearAssistant so far:

How many calories are in Diet Coke? (link)
When was Mahatama Gandhi born? (link)
What is the distance between city A and city B (link)
Who directed the film M (link)
What is the price of Kindle Paperwhite (link)

You can also ask the bot for word meanings, weather conditions, language translation, to convert between time zones, date calculations (how many days until Christmas) and more.

Writing a Twitter Bot – The Basic Ingredients

Writing a Twitter bot is surprisingly simple and you can get one up and running in 5 minutes. It helps if you know little bit of coding (simple JavaScript) but that’s certainly not a requirement for writing a basic Twitter bot.

A bot is essentially a program that is always running in the background and whenever it encounters a command (tweets in this), it processes it (based on the text of the tweeet) and sends a reply to the tweeter in another tweet.

Earlier, you would need a web server to run the bot while the bot itself would be written in languages like PHP, Perl or Python. That’s complicated so we will use Google Scripts to write the Twitter bot and host it on our Google Drive.

How to Write a Twitter Bot – Step by Step
Full article? H e r e 🙂

There Is No Mobile Internet! // @smashingmag – smashingmagazine.com

By Marek Wolski

A Quiet Change

At the beginning of June, Google published on its Webmaster Central Blog its “Recommendations for Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites.” Its recommendations are that responsiveness — or, where necessary, device-specific HTML — is the way to build websites for today. Both methods are based on all devices accessing one URL, which in Google’s words makes it “easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to…”

Following the recommendation means making most of your Web content accessible across devices. It ensures that each link shared across the Web leads back to the same place and that, irrespective of the user’s device, everyone gets the same design experience. It aims to standardize Web design approaches, but also to standardize user experience expectations.

Shortly after, Apple announced a lot of thrilling updates to iOS 6. One of the least talked about was Safari’s iCloud tabs. This syncs your open browser tabs and allows you to continue browsing from where you left off on another device. Google’s recent version of Chrome for iOS has the same feature. The result? The ultimate cross-media surfing experience, a digital doggy bag.

After many years of Internet people working on standards, technologies and practices to bring about a One Web experience, the two companies made a big push towards making it a reality. We are now a big step closer to, in the words of the W3C, “an Internet where as far as reasonably possible, the same information and services are available to users irrespective of the device they are using.” Well, that is only if website owners and brands get their act together and change their old ways. To do so, they will need to recognize that things aren’t what they seem and aren’t what many are still peddling.

Full article

Old Habits, Old Stereotypes

A couple of years ago, mobile devices couldn’t even handle many of the Web’s fundamental standards (JavaScript, for example). But as devices became as powerful as last year’s MacBook, the technology drove a behavioral shift. It wasn’t just early adopters who were using the mobile Web. It was every person and their dog with a smartphone and a 3G connection (around 75% of smartphone owners surf the Web).

Image source: Our Mobile Planet.

The line between what is and isn’t Web-enabled is blurring. People don’t see the Internet on their phone or tablet as being the “mobile Internet.” It’s just the Internet. In the words of mobile expert Brad Frost, “mobile users will do anything and everything desktop users will do, provided it’s presented in a usable way.”

For the last few years, across categories, mobile experience benchmarking studies have been filled with recommendations to broaden and deepen the content available. Users are searching more and longer for information that currently isn’t available on mobile or even tablet devices.

Image source: Strangeloop.

This desire for information is prevalent and strong enough that many opt for a less than optimal visit to the “full site” in order to access more or other information. The fact that almost a third of mobile users are prepared to endure poor navigation, slow loading times and no touch optimization really underscores the presence of this fundamental behavior.

Full article

Multi-Device World: about design and more, and more… // @smashingmag / @flipthemedia

Thnx to smashingmagazine.com and flipthemedia.com

When I think about where we are with the Web in comparison to other media in history, pinpointing it is really hard. Is it like when the Gutenberg Press was just invented and we’re experimenting with movable type, or are we still embellishing pages and slavishly copying books by hand?

By Francisco Inchauste

Our knowledge of building digital things changes rapidly, taking us from newborn to adult and back again every couple of years. It’s both exciting and frustrating, because just when you think you have it all figured out, it completely changes. But if you’re like me, learning something new keeps things interesting.

So, it seems pretty normal that our methods of designing and building websites are questioned every so often. The argument to ditch design apps (or to drastically minimize the time spent in them) and go straight to the browser has popped up a lot in the past few years and then quite recently. It’s obvious that our digital world and, by proxy, our design process are in a state of transition. And they should be: considering design in the context of your materials and goals is always important.

I tend to shy away from prescriptive approaches. Most decisions are framed by our experience, and, as humans, we’re continually drawn to and seek out what we already believe (known as “confirmation bias”), ignoring the rest. So, I strive to keep that in mind whenever listening to advice about how things should be done. We’re all navigating the same changing landscape here. What many designers recommend is the right answer for them and not necessarily the right answer for you, or your client. As Cameron Moll more eloquently states:

“You know your circumstances, your users, and your personal preferences best. And if that means responsive web design — or design methodology or todo app or office chair or whatever — isn’t the right choice for you, don’t be ashamed if you find yourself wanting more, or at least wanting something else.”

That’s exactly how I feel right now. A lot of the explorations into Web design lately have been looking for the best ways to optimize an experience and to make it as flexible as possible across devices. These are important issues. But what about the design principles we’ve proven and iterated on through a variety of media? How can we apply what we’ve learned about design so that it can be utilized in an appropriate way to create websites in this multi-canvas world?

“Typographic Design in the Digital Domain” with Erik Spiekermann and Elliot Jay Stocks

In an interview with Elliot Jay Stocks, legendary typographer and designer Erik Spiekermann explains how he finds it funny that designers today complain about limitations in designing for mobile…

by Elizabeth Wiley
1. Technology and use trends

Digital options increase every day
Fluidity allows you to reach people through all the different methods available
Some devices actually create new data, which yield new insights (i.e. FitBit, Fuel band, etc. This idea will also be interesting for toys.)
Network speeds increasing (huge difference from 3G to LTE)
With the decreased price of cloud storage, sharing content across devices is easier (shared experience)
Content management systems drive the consumer experience and should be integrated into the foundation of your platform

2. Types of connected experiences

Synchronized: for example, the eReader let’s you make notes and brings you back to where you last stopped, no matter the device. Evernote allows you to share information and access documents from different locations and devices.
Adaptive: content adapts to your current device. This could mean apps for the device you want to target or responsive websites. It’s important to consider how the customer will engage on a device and what information you need to share.
Complementary(second screen): people interact with content at an event or with others experiencing an event. A lot of networks are investing in second screen platforms. 80% of people with tablets watch television with a second screen in front of them; an opportunity for networks to build deeper experiences for customers.
Device shifting: people start searches on mobile/tablets and finishing them elsewhere, shifting seamlessly from device to device. Consider content and context of each device. For example, when searching for cars, on the phone you might want to show visuals, basic information, and location-based results, while on the PC you have expanded information, but don’t focus on location-based information specifically. Continuar leyendo «Multi-Device World: about design and more, and more… // @smashingmag / @flipthemedia»

noupe.com | Latest post

JavaScript-Turbo: Head.js Speeds Up Your Website
By Denis PotschienPosted in Javascript

Complex websites would not work well without JavaScript. Often there are several scripts residing in the head of your HTML document. The more you embed, the slower your website, potentially. Head.js is a JavaScript tool that calls itself the only script you need. We have put it to the test and found out that Head.js can really boost the performance on websites with several scripts. The more scripts you call in the head the higher the effect Head.js can provide.

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Endless Icons & Iconmonstr – Loads Of Free PNG-Icons And Growing Fast
By Dieter PetereitPosted in Freebie

There is a fresh repository in town and it deals with icons. We all know everybody loves icons. That’s understandable as icons are necessary replacements or at least additions to traditional navigation concepts in the wake of the mobile era. Today we introduce to you a project by name of Endless Icons, created and maintained by web developer Min Kim, based in Orange County, as well as a slightly more established project from Germany. Alexander Kahlkopf has already gathered almost 900 symbols, while Endless Icons is still working towards its first 100 icons. Both projects are subject to continuous and steady growth.

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BookBlock And Windy: 2 jQuery-Plugins Provide Exceptional Content Navigation
By Denis PotschienPosted in jQuery

Chances are, you are not looking for sliders, you have to watch your steps to avoid not trampling on them. There are more sliders on this planet than content for them to take care of. As this is the case, why do we introduce two more variants to our readership? It’s simple. BookBlock and Windy, the new jquery-plugins by Codrops, are extraordinary, totally fresh and new in their approach. They offer a variety of exciting effects to have you present your content in ways not seen before. I am impressed.

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Pixabay: More Than 40,000 Completely Free Photos And Illustrations
By Dieter PetereitPosted in Freebie

As designers we are always on the hunt for good pictures. Noupe certainly needs fitting imagery now and then and even more often. That’s where photo-services, stock image providers and the like come into play. There are big marketplaces, offering you high-grade imagery at more or less affordable rates. Then we find repositories with free usage policies but varying licenses, which at times are not easily comprehensible. I have certainly been in trouble with this kind of mine-seeking. Pixabay, a fresh repository with a quickly growing selection of excellent imagery, is different, dead-simple. All the pictures are free, no license conditions apply. Pixabay delivers pure public domain photos.

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bog.bancopopular-e.com | Conoce el nuevo etiquetado de neumáticos: más ahorro de carburante y más seguridad

por Equipo Social Media

Desde el 1 de noviembre, una nueva reglamentación de la Comisión Europea exige que en los neumáticos que se vendan dentro de la UE –excepto los recauchutados, con clavos, off-road, neumáticos para competición y neumáticos para vehículos de colección– tiene que figurar una etiqueta con tres características esenciales: consumo energético, seguridad en la frenada y el ruido que producen al rodar.

El etiquetado es similar al de los electrodomésticos, en el que la letra A califica a los más eficientes y la D a los que más electricidad consumen. En este caso, la clasificación cuenta con 7 apartados –de la A a la G–, que orientan al consumidor para que conozca la calidad de lo que está comprando. Sin embargo, no aporta cifras exactas de lo que supone equipar el vehículo con una u otra clase de neumático.

Esos datos los aporta un estudio realizado conjuntamente por la compañía Michelin y el RACC, el mayor club del automóvil de España >>>> Continuar leyendo «bog.bancopopular-e.com | Conoce el nuevo etiquetado de neumáticos: más ahorro de carburante y más seguridad»

geekets.com | Latest post

Pantallas flexibles de Samsung a la venta en el 2013

Autor: Lia Helle

Desde hace varios meses hemos hablado acerca del lanzamiento de pantallas flexibles, algo que principalmente ha sido impulsado por Samsung.

Samsung lanzará nuevas pantallas AMOLED

De acuerdo a fuentes coreanas, Samsung lanzará dispositivos con pantallas flexibles hasta el próximo año, con el fin de seguir perfeccionando esta tecnología y ofrecer una mejor experiencia.
Leer el resto de la entrada »

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Java es eliminado de los navegadores con Mac OS

Autor: Lia Helle

En la reciente actualización para Mac OS, Apple ha decidido eliminar Java, por lo que el contenido compatible con este script no puede apreciarse.

Apple retira Java de Mac OS

Apple sigue despidiéndose de diferentes servicios y aplicaciones, siendo la más reciente víctima Java, sin ninguna explicación extensa de por medio por parte de dicha empresa, pero si con algunas especulaciones.
Leer el resto de la entrada »

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Skype será incluido en Windows 8 por defecto (confirmado)

Autor: Lia Helle

Microsoft ha confirmado que Skype estará integrado a Windows 8, sistema operativo cuyo lanzamiento se llevará a cabo dentro de unos días.

Skype incluido en Windows 8

Skype formará parte de la interfaz Metro y con esto se confirma el uso de este servicio de mensajería instantánea por parte de la empresa de Redmond.
Leer el resto de la entrada »

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Casete con capacidad de almacenar 35 TB de información

Autor: Lukaniko
IBMdesarrollan un prototipo decasetecapaz de almacenar 35 TB de datos.

Prototipo de casete de 35 TB

El famoso casete que representó el medio para escuchar y compartir música en los 80´s, ahora vuelve en versión digital y con enorme capacidad de almacenamiento.

Leer el resto de la entrada »

Anonymous sostiene que Wikileaks los «traicionó»

Infotechnology

La organización de hackers lanzó un comunicado apuntando contra la agrupación de Julian Assange. «No nos arriesgaremos más a ir a prisión para defender a sus enemigos», sostuvieron.

«No soy yo, sos vos», le podrían haber dicho desde Anonymous a Wikileaks. Es que lo que supo ser un matrimonio feliz hoy se convirtió en un polémico divorcio. El detonante fue la decisión de la organización de Julian Assange deutilizar un «muro de pago» para ingresar a sus documentos. Desde la agrupación de hackers sostuvieron que «ya soportaron demasiado» y que «fueron traicionados». «La conclusión que hemos llegado es que Anonymous no puede apoyar más a la lo que Wikileaks se transformó», sostuvieron en un comunicado.

Además, aseguraron que desde hace unos años que «están preocupados» por el estado de Wikileaks, ya que sostienen que pasó de ser una agrupación enfocada en la libertad de la información a poner sus ojos solo en su líder y el afán por conseguir dinero.

Actualmente, el muro de pago que aparecía para ingresar a ciertos documentos fue dado de baja. En un comunicadofirmado por Assange, la organización explica los nuevos archivos relacionados a las elecciones de Estados Unidos que habilitaron en su sitio y señalan que «todas las donaciones servirán para pagar los costos de infraestructura, como los legales por los bloqueos financieros que sufre la organización. Continuar leyendo «Anonymous sostiene que Wikileaks los «traicionó»»

Web browser showdown: Which Windows app is really the best? | via pcworld.com

pcworld.com | BROWSERS

Nick Mediati@dtnick

Your Web browser is probably the most-used application on your PC. You check your email in it, you write in it, you collaborate with coworkers in it, you use it to watch cat videos. With so much at stake, you need a browser that works well for you.

But which one is the best? We put the three major Windows browsers—Google Chrome 21, Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, and Mozilla Firefox 15—through their paces and crowned an overall winner.

Browser performance

When we looked at the browser contenders previously, we concluded that all the major browsers loaded webpages at similar speeds.

But many new Web apps and services rely heavily on HTML5 and JavaScript, so the browser makers have been spending a lot of development time making sure that their programs render such apps and services quickly and efficiently.

To gauge how well browsers handle HTML5 and JavaScript code, we subjected Chrome, IE, and Firefox to the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark and to the WebVizBench benchmark for HTML5. In addition, we tested on a PC with switchable Nvidia graphics hardware to see how each browser exploited the extra processing horsepower in the graphics card.

Our test PC was an Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M5 laptop with a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 6GB of memory. The switchable graphics system consisted of an integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset and a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card with 1GB of video memory.

In our WebVizBench HTML5 benchmark test, Chrome and IE 9 saw large increases in performance when we switched to the dedicated graphics card instead of the integrated graphics chip.

Chrome achieved an average score of 5502 when we used the integrated graphics system, and hit an average of 5825 when we used the Nvidia graphics card. IE 9 came in second with average scores of 4797 and 5642, respectively; Firefox finished third after posting average scores of 4492 and 5600. Notably, Chrome did almost as well on this test using the integrated graphics hardware as the other browsers did using the more powerful Nvidia graphics card. So if your PC has a weak graphics card, you’ll probably get better performance from Chrome than from Firefox or IE.

Our tests for JavaScript performance were less conclusive, with all three browsers rendering the benchmark’s JavaScript code within 15 milliseconds of one another. Internet Explorer 9 eked out a narrow victory, completing the Sunspider benchmark in 200 milliseconds. Chrome 21 finished in second place at 206 milliseconds, and Firefox 15 rounded out the three at 214 milliseconds.

Winner: Google Chrome. Browser performance will vary some depending on your PC, but Chrome was a solid all-around performer in our testing.

Ease of use Continuar leyendo «Web browser showdown: Which Windows app is really the best? | via pcworld.com»

10 Useful Infographics about HTML5 | via sixrevisions.com

10 Useful Infographics about HTML5

The Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter:@sixrevisions.

Whether you need to quickly get up to speed with HTML5 or are in search of easy-to-digest resources that you can use to educate your clients about this web technology that’s creating a huge paradigm shift in the web and mobile development ecosystem, this collection of infographics that visualize HTML5 facts and figures will help.

If you’d like to go to the source of an infographic so that you can find a larger version and learn more about the infographic, click on the respective title or preview image.

1. HTML5: Past, Present and Future

This infographic is an overview of the state of HTML5 in web and mobile apps, with data on HTML5-capable mobile web browsers, browser compatibility, and more.

2. WTF is HTML5?

This is a simple primer on HTML5, which can be an excellent educational reference for your clients. The original source of this infographic is no longer available.

3. History of HTML5

This infographic traces the progression of HTML5, starting in 2004 when the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) was formed.

4. HTML5: Why Developers Need It Continuar leyendo «10 Useful Infographics about HTML5 | via sixrevisions.com»

7 Inspiring Interviews That Every Web Designer/Developer Should Read

•
Written by: Rean John Uehara

It’s already August and the year is about to draw to a close…how are you doing with your work and projects? I know that inspiration is quite often hard to come by, and with our line of work inspiration is mainly the driving force. To give you a boost, why not read these 7 inspiring interviews by famous bloggers, web designers, and web developers, who have garnered success in their fields?

Are you ready to be inspired?!

7 Inspiring Interviews

Four of the interviews below actually focus on how their design blogs became a huge success. These blogs they have started simply as pet projects to teach other people about their passion: web design and web development. In the end, they managed to not only fulfill their wants, but they also managed to create entire communities for designers and developers by providing useful resources. This is one of the reasons why I once asked, Hey Web Designers and Web Developers, Are You Blogging Yet?

The following interviews will redirect to Founder Tips (except #1), 1WD’s sister website where we publish interviews and success stories of people.

Ready to be inspired? Go!

1. An Interview With Chris Coyier – Founder of CSS-Tricks Continuar leyendo «7 Inspiring Interviews That Every Web Designer/Developer Should Read»

Scientists Convert a 53,000-Word Book Into DNA

digital-dna-600 by Peter Pachal | Mashable.com

In a scientific first, Harvard University researches successfully transformed a 53,426-word book into DNA, the same substance that provides the genetic template for all living things. The achievement could eventually lead to the mass adoption of DNA as a long-term storage medium.

Published Thursday in the journal Science, the experiment aimed to demonstrate the viability of storing large amounts of data on DNA molecules. Since the data is recorded on individual nucleobase pairs in the DNA strand (those adenine-guanine/cytosine-thymine pairs you may be straining to remember from high school biology), DNA can actually store more information per cubic millimeter than flash memory or even some experimental storage techs, IEEE Spectrum reports.

The difficulty is in the translation — both to DNA and back again (summarized in the diagram below). The researchers started with the book’s content, which included the text as well as 11 images and a javascript program, and converted it to binary code. Then they assigned every 0 and 1 a nucleobase.

dna-book-640

Top image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo Continuar leyendo «Scientists Convert a 53,000-Word Book Into DNA»

Great jQuery plugins for fresh websites

One can only imagine how tough it was to practice web design back when everything seemed so new — during the days of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft FrontPage. Looking back, it seems like such an archaic time in the history of web design. It was almost impossible to design something of supreme and intelligent creativity. Back then, you were seen as creative if you had an awful flashing background or colored scrollbars.

There wasn’t a ton of flexibility really when it came down to the nitty gritty of design. Many of the layouts were the same and mimicked what was seen in magazines and newspapers. I mean just think about it: not too long ago we were able to finally figure out a way to use decorative fonts online. Beforehand, it was all Arial, all Verdana and all Times New Roman — in 2012, can you imagine living that life?

Tables were the norm and those weren’t too flexible. Speaking of flexibility, how did we ever live without responsiveness? If you wanted to design a website a while ago, you pretty much were boxed in to work with what you had. No one complained then, but thank goodness for progressive technology.

Now…
Fast forward to now, and we can pretty much design anything the way we want to, in whatever we want to. These types of things shouldn’t be taken for granted, but as new generations of designers and developers enter this realm, it pretty much is. I mean, just a few months ago, we were finally able to use style sheets to create rounded corners — how quick do we forget? Continuar leyendo «Great jQuery plugins for fresh websites»