Search the archive

SAMSUNG MAY BE WORKING ON AN INCREDIBLE NEW SMARTWATCH DESIGN

Samsung is reportedly moving away from round screens on its current Galaxy smartwatches and returning to rectangular ones.

PINBALL USER INTERFACE

The redesign of Google’s login form is the latest example of Pinball UI, which is when various user interface elements on an application screen could be arranged meaningfully but are not - a simple redesign would make it much easier to use.

WHY THE HOUSE VOTED TO BAN TIKTOK AND WHAT COULD COME BACK

The House passed a bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face having it banned on US devices. The bill received bipartisan backing with a 352-65 vote. Proponents argue the measure is vital for national security, while opponents contend it violates free speech rights and could harm businesses. The bill’s fate in the Senate remains uncertain.

COMPANIES CAN NOW PROMOTE MEMBER CONTENT WITH LINKEDIN THOUGHT LEADER ADS

LinkedIn is expanding its Thought Leader ads by enabling businesses to promote content from any user in the app, not just their own employees. To help prevent content from being promoted without consent, creators will receive a notification asking them to approve or deny requests to promote their posts.

HOW “NEW” NAVIGATION INCREASED SALES BY 32%

Ferplast, an online pet supply store, found through research and analysis that visitors were failing to find what they wanted and almost 90% of them never reached a product page. The brand tested a full-width navigation menu against the control hamburger menu, resulting in a 32% increase in sales. This worked because the new navigation gave users a clear forward path and exposed the breadth and depth of the brand’s product range.

15 WAYS TO USE ANIMATION IN YOUR MARKETING

Animations can elevate story-telling in sales decks, emails, and landing pages. Figma uses product hero animations to convey its product value and differentiation faster. Mutiny enhances its case study page with subtle movement upon hover. Mailchimp uses animation to create micro-interactions with users’ product experiences (eg. an animated high-five after users send emails).

INCREASE SALES WITH THE PSYCH ENERGY FRAMEWORK

Psych energy is your customers' emotional response as they go through your funnel. It is measured from 0 to 100 and it increases or decreases based on customer interactions. The Psych Energy Framework is useful for determining if you are providing enough positive value to your potential customers before asking something from them. For example, share demos and case studies before asking for personal data to increase the chances of conversion.

SENJA

Seja automates testimonial and case study collection. It allows users to customize testimonial collection forms in seconds, automate invites and follow-ups, and turn testimonials into shareable images and videos. A freemium version is available.

LINK IN BIO ON INSTAGRAM: MARKETING EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON THE BEST WAYS TO USE IT

Maximizing the potential of your Instagram bio is crucial for driving conversions, sales, and web traffic. This article recommends utilizing a link in bio tool, regularly updating your links, and aligning your link strategy with your marketing objectives. It provides insights from several industry experts based on how they successfully use the bio field for their brands.

FROM 0 TO 10 MILLION USERS IN FOUR YEARS

Copy.ai rapidly scaled from 0 to 10 million users in four years by leveraging AI technology. To grow so fast, it launched an MVP within weeks, utilized only 7 software tools for development, and adopted a 'prosumer' model with an early monetization scheme starting at $3 per month. It also leveraged AI to accelerate product development and distribution.

BUYER PSYCHOLOGY OF COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY

Cognitive Load Theory explains why people forget key information and make suboptimal choices when overloaded with sensory information. Brands can mitigate this by breaking down choice architecture into chunks, for example, organizing a huge product catalog into understandable categories. It also helps to simplify complex systems, just as WeightWatchers did by distilling weight loss into a points system. Use imagery with product specifications to help users understand specific product features more easily.

WHERE WEB USERS SPEND TIME VS. WHERE TRAFFIC REFERRALS ORIGINATE

Just because most of your traffic comes from Google, doesn’t mean you should spend most of your digital marketing effort on Google. Social media, productivity, news, and e-commerce sites all have a larger share of total web visits than search engines, which means that search isn’t the most significant opportunity for capturing new users. Instead, invest in the sources of influence to which your audience pays attention, such as social accounts they follow, podcasts they listen to, or specific websites they visit.

HOW TO WRITE LUSCIOUS, HIGH-PROTEIN EXPLANATIONS

21 BEST SEO NEWSLETTERS

A curated list of SEO newsletters ranging from beginner to expert.

TIKTOK'S GROWTH RATE HAS COLLAPSED. 'LIFE' MAY BE GETTING IN THE WAY FOR ITS YOUNGER USERS

TikTok's growth rate stagnated in Q4 2023, particularly in the U.S., suggesting a shift in user behavior as many young users, who initially flocked to the app, are now entering adulthood and finding less time for extensive usage.

HOW DISCORD'S LIVE STREAMING WORKS

Discord's live streaming feature broadcasts users' screen activity to others in their group. To achieve this, Discord uses OS-specific APIs for screen and audio capture along with robust fallback mechanisms. The captured video data is then encoded using codecs like VP8 and H264 for efficient transmission, with Discord servers handling quality adjustments and routing for high-quality delivery to viewers.

POKÉMON GO: ARCHITECTURE OF THE #1 AR GAME IN THE WORLD

Pokémon GO began as an iteration of Niantic's earlier augmented-reality game, Ingress. It uses GCP’s scalability for its massive player base. The game's architecture heavily utilizes Google Kubernetes Engine for managing workloads and Spanner for its global consistency and high transactionality in storing player and map data. Niantic introduced Redis as an in-memory cache to handle the immense traffic spikes during live events like Raid Battles. Pokémon GO uses PushGateway for real-time notifications.

BEST PRACTICES FOR WRITING TESTS WITH REACT TESTING LIBRARY

To write effective tests using the React Testing Library, developers should focus on using ByRole queries to target elements based on accessibility roles. For simulating user interactions, one should use the userEvent library rather than fireEvent. Utilize findBy* queries and waitForElementToBeRemoved to manage asynchronous updates for more robust tests.

FALSEHOODS PROGRAMMERS BELIEVE ABOUT TIME ZONES

Time zones are complex. Rules and boundaries change frequently based on political and geographical influences. Developers often underestimate the challenge of handling time zones and their irregular offsets, multiple names, and unpredictable changes by governments. Building any system reliant on time zones requires careful consideration of their complexities to avoid future errors.

KEEPING TRACK OF ENGINEERING-WIDE GOALS AND MIGRATIONS

Yelp created an internal platform called EE Metrics to help engineering teams manage technical debt and highlight important company-wide engineering initiatives. EE Metrics provides teams with detailed web pages outlining their technical debt and surfaces key migrations or health metrics. The platform's Team Health Reports allow teams to see critical audits and prioritize actions based on the highest impact to the team.

LLMS ARE NOT ENOUGH… WHY CHATBOTS NEED KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

LLMs have impressive factual knowledge, but their reasoning abilities remain limited, as they struggle with applying their knowledge to novel queries. Explicit knowledge representation, such as databases or knowledge graphs, is needed for reliable question-answering that combines the factual recall of LLMs with efficient search capabilities. However, designing these knowledge structures is not an easy task.

* Deep dive programs on gen AI

* 500+ sessions [14] (101 - 301 level) across 10 different tracks * Cutting-edge AI demos [12] and interactive learning

PM PT on March 31, 2024. Register now ↗️

REACT GEIGER

React Geiger is a tool for "audiolizing" React performance issues. It runs in the background and makes little clicking noises during excessively slow component rerenders.

FINDER

Finder generates the shortest CSS selector for elements on web pages.

FLYDE

Flyde is an open-source visual programming language that aims to augment traditional coding practices. It is designed for integration with TypeScript/JavaScript codebases. Flyde features a VSCode extension, Node.js support, and browser compatibility.

SALT LABS RESEARCH FINDS SECURITY FLAWS WITHIN CHATGPT ECOSYSTEM

Researchers have identified significant security vulnerabilities within the ChatGPT ecosystem that potentially allow attackers to access users' accounts on third-party websites, such as GitHub, without their consent. These vulnerabilities were found both in the core ChatGPT platform and its plugins. They expose sensitive data and enable account takeovers through exploitation of the OAuth authentication process and other flaws in plugin frameworks.

COMPRESSING CHESS MOVES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

This article explores efficient chess move encoding to reduce database size and improve query speeds on a large chess website. The author developed a custom encoding that represents moves using fewer bits than standard text formats. This approach optimizes for common move types (pawn moves, captures) and in a test case, the encoding reduced file size by 74%.

A FORMULA FOR RESPONSIVE FONT-SIZE

The CSS formula “font-size: calc(1rem + 0.25vw);” enables responsive font sizing, allowing text to scale smoothly across various screen widths and removing the need for traditional media query breakpoints.

C++ SAFETY, IN CONTEXT

This article lays out a comprehensive view of C++ safety issues, advocating for cross-disciplinary collaboration across programming languages and security communities to address various security and safety threats within languages.

WRITE FOR OTHERS BUT MOSTLY FOR YOURSELF

The act of writing, particularly with the intention of public sharing, forced this author to find and understand gaps in their own knowledge, leading to deeper learning for themselves.

CHEERP

Cheerp is a C/C++ compiler that optimizes code for WebAssembly and JavaScript, enabling easy integration of existing C/C++ libraries and applications into web environments.

TIKTOK PREPARES TO CHALLENGE INSTAGRAM WITH 'TIKTOK PHOTOS'

The latest TikTok app APK contains strings that mention a standalone app called TikTok Photos. TikTok appears to be considering offering a more dedicated photo experience that will allow users to sync their existing photo posts from the main TikTok app. There is no official launch date and TikTok has not confirmed the existence of the app. A leaked icon for the app is available in the article.

APPLE TO ALLOW IOS APP DOWNLOADS DIRECT FROM WEBSITES IN THE EU

Apple's new iOS web distribution feature is a new way to distribute iOS apps in EU markets without the need for a separate app store. App developers considering the option will need to adhere to Apple's strict rules. It will allow apps to be installed from website domains registered with App Store Connect. Apple appears to be limiting the option to large developers with a good standing around for at least two years.

STRATOLAUNCH LAUNCHES 1ST ROCKET-POWERED FLIGHT OF HYPERSONIC PROTOTYPE FROM WORLD'S LARGEST AIRPLANE

Stratolaunch successfully launched its first rocket-powered prototype vehicle from a carrier plane on March 9. The dart-shaped Talon-A1 is an advanced air-launched vehicle designed to launch from a huge dual-fuselage carrier plane and travel at hypersonic speeds. Stratolaunch is now ramping up its plans to manufacture a fully reusable version of the vehicle. Pictures of the Talon-A1 test vehicle taken during its powered flight test are available in the article.

THE U.S. NOW HAS A DRUG FOR SEVERE FROSTBITE. HOW DOES IT WORK?

Iloprost, a drug that can prevent the need to amputate frozen fingers and toes due to frostbite, has been approved as a treatment for frostbite by the FDA. The drug has already been used to treat frostbite for years in a number of European countries and elsewhere in the world. It works as a vasodilator, widening blood vessels and improving blood flow. Iloprost prevents blood clotting and is also used to treat blood pressure-related illnesses.

INTRODUCING DEVIN, THE FIRST AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER

BUILDING META’S GENAI INFRASTRUCTURE

This article shares details on two versions of Meta's 24,576-GPU data center scale cluster. These clusters support the company's current and next-generation AI models as well as AI research and development across GenAI and other areas. Meta's long-term vision is to build artificial general intelligence that is open and built responsibly to be widely available so that everyone can benefit from it. Its infrastructure is designed to power this ambition.

STATE OF STARTUP COMPENSATION, H2 2023

This report shares insights about startup hiring in 2023, a year that saw headcount at VC-backed startups experience a net decline for the first time in at least five years. There were more total job departures in VC-backed startups last year than there were new hires. Startups were still hiring, but their priorities shifted. Compensation strategies shifted as well.

BLUESKY LAUNCHES OZONE, A TOOL THAT LETS USERS CREATE AND RUN THEIR OWN INDEPENDENT MODERATION SERVICES

Ozone is a tool that lets individuals and teams collaboratively review and label content on Bluesky. Bluesky plans to open up the ability for individuals and teams to run their own independent moderation services later this week. Users will be able to subscribe to additional moderation services on top of Bluesky's default moderation. Installing filters from independent moderation services will be as easy as following another account. Moderation service filters will be available on the desktop version of Bluesky first - a mobile version will be available soon.

UBICLOUD WANTS TO BUILD AN OPEN SOURCE ALTERNATIVE TO AWS

Ubicloud wants to offer an open-source layer of core cloud computing services that allows developers to build their own cloud on top of affordable bare-metal servers.

A FORMULA FOR RESPONSIVE FONT-SIZE

Instead of defining font-size piecewise, just use this one-line function: 1rem + 0.25vw.

DISCORD TO BRING MORE GAMES, APPS WITH NEW DEVELOPMENT SDK FOR CHATS

Discord's new development SDK platform will allow developers to embed an iframe within the platform to enable users to access games and apps directly through the chat platform.

TRANSFORMER DEBUGGER

Transformer Debugger is a tool that supports investigations into specific behaviors of small language models by combining automated interpretability techniques with sparse autoencoders.

TELEGRAM EYES IPO AS USER NUMBERS CLOSE IN ON 1 BILLION

Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov says the company hopes to become profitable within the next two years.

DEVIN, THE FIRST AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER (2 MINUTE VIDEO)

Devin is an autonomous agent that solves engineering tasks through the use of its own shell, code editor, and web browser.

COGNITION LAUNCHES THEIR AI SOFTWARE ENGINEER DEVIN

Cognition announced a new system called Devin that scores 14% on SWE-Bench, a challenging benchmark that tests AI’s abilities to write code. GPT-4 scored 1.7%. This model shows strong in-context learning abilities.