I’d like to share with you a really useful infographic I just stumpled upon via SmashingApps.com. In a recent survey conducted by ZoneAlarm, 79% of consumers were found to use risky password construction practices, such as using personal information and common words. The graphic below illustrates some of the most commonly made mistakes people make when selecting a password, as well as some tips on how to make your password more secure (click the image below to see it on its full size):

W3C had just revealed the new HTML 5 logo, designed to encourage supporters of open technology to unite in propagating and increasing awareness of this vital technological progress. The HTML 5 web logo was designed to unite current Web applications. It’s trailed by a group of smaller icons, used to represent various aspects of the modern Web like semantics, graphics, etc.

Available for use with an easily obtained license, the logo can be used by those who use HTML 5, CSS3, SVG, WOFF, and other technologies, or by those who simply wish to show their support for the technology.

Though not the “official” logo for HTML 5, it has been receiving a warm welcome from most Web developers. People are getting excited about this new direction in technology and are happy to have a way to show their support. All persons are encouraged to use the logo in creative ways, such as placing it on apparel or websites. The only stipulation for use with the logo is that WC3 be credited for use.

Some controversy surrounds which technologies should be represented by the new logo, most claiming that this all inclusive approach is not giving HTML 5 due justice, and could be potentially misleading for some.

Have opinions on the new logo or its use? Could you see yourself using it, or do you think it’s obsolete? Post your thoughts below; I relish your input!

The SEO market can sometimes be a stormy sea to navigate. Google recently sent out a warning via it’s blog that after they noticed an increase in spam over the last few months and that they would be cracking down on so called content farms. These are sites that rehash low quality content on web pages or blogs.

Web Spam is all that junk you see in search results pages, when websites try to cheat their way into higher position in search results without offering valuable content to the visitor, violating this way search engine quality guidelines. A decade ago, the situation was really bad: search engines would regularly return off-topic web spam for many different searches. Fortunately, for the most part, Google has successfully suppressed spamming content, even though some of the spammers resorted to sneakier and even illegal tactics such as hacking websites.

“We’ve also radically improved our ability to detect hacked sites, which were a major source of spam in 2010. And we’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content.” principal engineer Matt Cutts said.

Cutts went further and denied strongly that Google will be more lenient with content farm web sites when they’re serving Google ads. It’s been a widespread rumor, with Adsense bringing in around $2.5 billion a year for the company, around 30 percent of its revenue.

According to Google the search engine has already launched two major algorithmic changes targeting low-quality sites in the beginning of 2011 after an outrage by users to put a stop to low quality content sites and blogs. Google says that they will monitor the situation and apply changes to their policy as seen fit to combat the problem.

How will Google separate the relevant results from the spamming ones? What do you think about Google’s efforts to combat spam?

I would like to let you know about an interesting tool I’ve just stumbled upon called whichloadsfaster. Its purpose is to calculate the loading time of two websites and determine which one is loading faster then the other one (e.g. Site A is 1.5x faster than Site B). This tool is open source, written in HTML and JavaScript and runs entirely on the client-side.

whichloadsfaster is a fun way to spread the word that web performance matters. It’s about friendly competition and about testing in everybody’s browser, not just ones that have nice performance tools already.

PS: I am not sure yet how accurate it is. I will just have to keep testing. So far, so good!

Today people receive a huge amount of textual information from digital media, such as computer displays, mobiles, eBooks, etc. This inevitably raises new requirements to the fonts used for text presentation. First of all, modern fonts are those, which are easily readable from digital screens. That is why most of the digital fonts used today belong to the group of sans-serif fonts. The absence of serif elements makes such fonts appearance clean, clear and easily perceived by human eyes.

Furthermore, clean modern fonts usually look heavier thanks to bolder lines, increased weight and width. Though usually void of decorative elements, such as curly glyph endings or fancy backgrounds, modern clean fonts remain aesthetically rich and fulfill their core tasks perfectly. Perhaps, the best evidence for that statement is the fact that more and more people today prefer digital media over traditional printed resources for reading news, magazine articles and high-volume books.

1. Cantarell Regular

Font family: Cantarell
Font subfamily: Regular
Unique subfamily identification: ABATTIS : Cantarell Regular : 17-7-2009
Full font name: Cantarell Regular
Copyright notice: Copyright (c) 2009 Dave Crossland

2. Garrison Cond. Sans BOLD

Font family: Garrison Cond. Sans
Font subfamily: BOLD
Unique subfamily identification: FontMonger:Garrison Cond. Sans BOLD
Full font name: Garrison Cond. Sans BOLD
Copyright notice: Copyright (c) 1991 Digital Typeface Corp.

Read the rest of this entry…

On behalf of Bit{Repository}, I’d like to sincerely wish you a very happy, healthy and successful 2010! I want to thank everyone for visiting us and hope that you have learned interesting and useful things here. We will make sure this year we will offer lots of giveaways and high-quality content.

Whether you are an employee or a freelancer, we wish you lot of successes in your programming/design career and all the best to you and your loved ones. Here’s to a prosperous 2010! Cheers!

punypng is a free optimization service of Gracepoint After Five, useful to reduce the file size of an image by converting it into a highly-compressed, lossless PNG image.

Features include:

• Punny Previews – You can hover over the link of your file and get a puny preview of your puny image
• Improved Privacy – Images compressed by punypng are yours soley to own and keep as punnypng automatically delete any image you upload within 15 minutes
• Built-in Support for Dirty Transparency – Your transparent PNGs and GIFs are now compressed up to 35% more using dirty transparency

Whether you have a GIF, JPEG or PNG, use punypng for outrageously fast page loads and help make the web more puny!

Update: This post is outdated and the promotion is no longer available. However, you can visit the Envato’s marketplaces to buy and sell all sorts of digital products.

To celebrate Envato’s 3rd birthday the managers of the company are offering a very special Birthday Bundle that packs together 37 of their favorite items worth of a total of $300 and offer them to us for a ridiculously low $20 price tag. This special offer is available for 3 days only (August 19-21) so you’ll have to hurry!

In this package (a 900MB zip archive) there are files from ThemeForest, FlashDen, VideoHive, GraphicRiver and Audio Jungle.

Packed into the bundle are no less than 37 items from across all five marketplaces, including items like Maximus’ top selling WordPress theme “Convergence”, VectorFlower’s “ZOOM / PAN CONTROLS” and Parker & Kent’s “AS2 XML Elegant Portfolio”. These are some extremely popular files at full price, but for three days only you’ll get them along with 34 others for less than the price of Convergence on its own.

So far the package has been downloaded by over 5,000 customers. Click here to view more details about this awesome offer!