1.)  Content Matters

The basis of good design is good content. Outdated blogs are a thing of the past. Use your content to educate or entertain your audience – it boosts credibility.

2.) Mobile Responsiveness

If your site is not mobile-friendly you’ve immediately lost points for relevancy with your consumers. The premise of consumers desiring to access your site from a mobile setting is something all businesses should capitalize upon, and make the UX flawless.

3.) Social Media Badges

Share all your networks and all of your messages by adding these attractive and easy to use badges to your site. Customers can easily redirect to your various social sites to further their interaction with your business.

4.) Infographics

These trendy communication graphics tackle big ideas and break them down into understandable bits of information. Our attention spans are more prone to learn when communication is presented in this way.

5.) Infinite Scrolling

Sites like Pinterest make this a nearly addicting feature. Uninterrupted surfing allows for a very smooth experience, and increases the amount of time users spend on your site. It’s like being served breakfast, lunch, and dinner without ever having to leave bed.

6.) Animated GIFs

An animated GIF or Graphics Interchange Format file is a graphic image on a Web page that moves, it is the lovechild of photo and video and is a loop of ordered images that is often accompanied with text.

7.) Design Simplicity

Large background images, large text and minimalist layouts, it seems that the design trends this year can be summed up with bigger is better and less is more. Bear in mind those two rules and you will have the trendiest website of the year.

Inspiration has been chasing me around lately. I’ve attached a series of photos and a video that have both opened my eyes to the good things around me. The photos show acts of kindness – people who have encountered a variety of situations and decided ‘I’m going to make this better.’ This is a notion that sometimes does not occur to our distracted minds: loving people where they’re at, even when it is not ‘convenient for us.’  A lot of my friends have had a similar reaction to this media – it has left us in tears, smiling, and feeling all around inspired. What if this type of news was spread more often? What if this was the front page story rolled up on peoples doorsteps in the morning? I don’t think it would be too wild of an estimation to say that more people would emulate such behavior. I’m not suggesting a revolution – just one inspired person bettering a situation. That’s the kind of behavior that’s contagious – that is what needs to be put in kids video games – written about in magazines – and plastered on highway billboards “LOVE PEOPLE AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS.”  It’s a mutually beneficial attitude, and it is definitely worth promoting.

photos: http://imgur.com/gallery/sfydQ

Facebook has decided to enter the world of search engines with their newly innovated Graph Search. They’ve outlined their newest stalking enhancement soon to be added to the social media site in a press release:

“Graph Search and web search are very different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: ‘hip hop’) and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: ‘my friends in New York who like Jay-Z’) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook. We believe they have very different uses.”

Generally speaking, search engines are used to answer questions. So, what can Facebook offer to the nearly perfected search industry? Well, Mark Zuckerberg took it upon himself to answer this very question.

“We can answer a set of questions that no one else can really answer. All those other services are indexing primarily public information, and stuff in Facebook isn’t out there in the world — it’s stuff that people share. There’s no real way to cut through the contents of what people are sharing, to fulfill big human needs about discovery, to find people you wouldn’t otherwise be connected with. And we thought we should do something about that. We’re the only service in the world that can do that.”

In other words, what Facebook has to offer is: you, your mother, and me. Our opinions, preferences, and likes will now be a searchable commodity. It has been proven that people trust friend reviews over media, so essentially this will allow users to search word of mouth in a much more convenient way.

One has to ask if this new feature is necessarily a good thing? Will Facebook going become the new Wikipedia? Will the next generation cite Facebook search queries on their Works Cited pages? I surely hope not, but we do live in a time of Gangnam Style and Honey boo boo child, so it is best to not write it off as impossible.

How much do we rely on technology in our everyday lives? What would a day be like sans Google, Facebook or Pinterest? These are all questions that I never cared to answer or research until my professor assigned my class to do a case study on the very topic, and participate in a technology fast.

My fast happened by accident. I wasn’t planning to spend Friday without a phone. Who in their right mind would choose to abandon their connection with the outside world on that particular day of the week? Well, my Droid Incredible 2 chose to take its final breaths late Thursday night, thus leaving me with no option. (pause for a moment of silence)

Being the optimist that I sometimes am, I turned this loss into an opportunity to complete my 24 hours without technology. On weekends I travel to State College, the sometime monotonous 1 hour and 15 minute drive is typically drenched with technology. I catch up with my friends in Nashville and listen to new music I have found during the week. However, due to the fast none of the above took place, and I can honestly say that I didn’t mind. I probably was a better driver and I listened to top 40 country radio and spent the ride asking God “Why didn’t I write that song?”

Once I reached State College I drove to my boyfriends house and luckily he was there. Otherwise, I would have had no way to contact him. I did not mind the absence of my phone or computer while with him, good company is the best distraction. I did catch myself reaching into my bag for my phone a couple of times, but my time apart from technology did not inspire any life changing realizations.

Overall, I’m very aware of my technology usage. I enjoy things like the endless scrolling feature on Pinterest and if a moment is worth repeating (or retweeting) I gladly play my role in the online society and share it with my friends and followers. For me, technology is a time filler when I’m standing in lines and a time passer when I’m hopelessly bored, and a time saver for most other situations. However, seven times out of ten I would rather have a face to face conversation than use technology. When that ratio drops below five I will acknowledge that I have a problem, but until then I will keep scrolling.

If you haven’t tried PB2, you’re missing out.