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Domain Name Security, and Why It Really Matters

By: Michael Diedrick on Mar 8, 2021

Any website build or redesign requires we get involved with the organization’s domain name, and we’ve seen a lot of things that worry us. We’re creating this nice, easy checklist to keep everyone's domain names safe and secure. After the break we'll explain an overview about domain names, registrars and why keeping domain names safe and secure is vital. We'll also include a bonus round that can save money and administrative headaches.

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Tags: Domain Names Security

Image of a sample sitemap

Content Strategy Skills to Connect With Your Patrons

By: Michael Diedrick on Sep 2, 2019

Library navigations are important to get right because of the wide range of people visiting a site, and the range of needs those people have. We often hear librarians consider their website an online branch, which requires the care and thought an offline branch would take. So, how do you start thinking about a content strategy for a new branch? Read more!

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Tags: Design Libraries

Screenshot of Events page, showcasing the musician Sunshine Pete

West Bend Community Memorial Library Puts New Website Live

By: Michael Diedrick on Jan 4, 2019

Libraries are of course a major focus here at Byte, and working with librarians is a great pleasure because they’re highly organized, they understand how content works and they’re strongly patron and community focused. We especially loved working with the good people at the West Bend Community Memorial Library (WBCML) because they’re highly inclusive and strive to communicate effectively

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Tags: Byte Clients Design General News Libraries

Image of intricate wires combining into networks

AlphaGo at the Milwaukee Film Festival

By: Michael Diedrick on Sep 20, 2017

Byte is in its third year as community partner for the 2017 Milwaukee Film Festival showing of the film AlphaGo, a documentary that covers the subjects of artificial intelligence and “deep learning”. If you like to see explorations of how artificial intelligence (AI) teaches us humans about us, this will be a fun documentary.

The chinese game of Go is considered to be the most difficult game in the world, and ...

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Tags: General News MKE Film Festival

Christmas comes early: New business cards!

By: Joy O'Brien on Nov 4, 2014

image of the office cat aiding in the unboxing of the new business cards

Our new business cards came in the mail, and they look great! Mokey, our furry senior designer, approves.

Anyone familiar with Moo, a popular printing company, will recognize that these are Luxe business cards. They’re about 3 times thicker than your standard card, and it’s noticeable. There’s also a very subtle blue stripe all around the edge of the card. It’s all about the details, folks.

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Tags: Design General News

Image of Byte's wordmark, in blue, on a black background

Meet the new Byte wordmark!

By: Joy O'Brien on Oct 22, 2014

Image of Byte's wordmark, in blue, on a black background

 

“I want you to have business cards,” Michael announced to me one morning, coffee in one hand and his own card in another. He handed it to me and continued, “but this design is old, and it’s not working anymore. How would you like to redesign it?”

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Tags: Design General News

1,000 Times Good Night at the Milwaukee Film Festival

By: Joy O'Brien on Sep 16, 2014

Byte has been a regular supporter of the Milwaukee Film Festival and this year we're proud to co-present 1,000 Times Good Night.

The film is about Rebecca Thomas (Juliette Binoche), a woman torn between two passions: the love she feels for her husband ("Game of Thrones" Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and two daughters at home in Dublin and the social responsibility she feels as a war photographer sent to conflict zones to capture the devastation experienced within them. When one assignment leaves her wounded, she is made to choose once and for all between her family and career. Director Erik Poppe captures both sides of this equation with humane generosity, composing stunning images of far-flung locales while allowing luminous performances from Binoche and Coster-Waldau to encapsulate the inner struggle that this ultimatum generates.

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Tags: MKE Film Festival

You case-insensitive bastard

By: Michael Diedrick on Aug 12, 2014

JQuery is an immensely useful framework in Javascript, and even better, when it misses something, like how the ':contains' selector only finds things that are the same case, it's surprisingly easy to extend.  

$.extend($.expr[":"], {
"containsNoCase": function(elem, i, match, array) {
return (elem.textContent || elem.innerText || "").toLowerCase().indexOf((match[3] || "").toLowerCase()) >= 0;
}
});

Then change your :contains selector to :containsNoCase, like $("body:containsNoCase").each(....  And voila, you’ll shed a tear for both the little and big letters in no time.

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Tags: How-Tos Process Tech Simplicity

Visionaries

By: Michael Diedrick on May 27, 2014

Illustration displaying an early idea similar to internet, of 7 men connected to one another through one instrument

Long before the 1945 ideas of Vannevar Bush, known to be the seeds of the modern internet, there was a Belgian bibliographer and entrepreneur named Paul Otlet. In 1895, Otlet envisioned "Universal Libraries" as a way to give access from afar to a vast number of books.

A new piece in The Atlantic by Alex Wright, Secret History of Hypertext, describes how 40 years later Otlet refined the idea to "electric telescopes" which could deliver books, pictures, audio recordings and movies. In 1935, Otlet wrote "From a distance, everyone will be able to read text, enlarged and limited to the desired subject, projected on an individual screen. In this way, everyone from his armchair will be able to contemplate the whole of creation, in whole or in certain parts."

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Tags: General News Inspiration

Heartbleed Vulnerability

By: Michael Diedrick on Apr 9, 2014

Red outline of a heart, with a bleeding effectIt’s another day, so there’s another worry in the world of web development (and servers in general) -- the Heartbleed vulnerability for OpenSSL  It’s a tiny ‘glitch in the mainframe’ that allows someone to read 64 kb of a server’s memory and un-encrypt things that are sent through what we all understood to be secure, like your credit card numbers or your secure email.  And while every minor bug gets security analysts and the press running around like a bunch of frantic muppets, this one will be a real problem if not addressed. Why?  Because it’s not a single piece of software, it’s part of the foundation of secure communication, OpenSSL, the system that keeps the most secret of the secrets.

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Tags: General News Security

Snippet of a movie title, reading, Google and the World Brain

Google and the World Brain at Milwaukee Film Festival

By: Michael Diedrick on Sep 23, 2013

snippet of a movie title, reading, Google and the World BrainByte is co-presenting a film at the Milwaukee Film Festival 2013, Google and the World Brain. The film seems to be positing that there’s evil lurking below Google’s “don’t be evil” unofficial motto.  The trailer ends with a quote, “google could basically hold the whole world hostage,” pushing the idea that their seeming monopoly could limit access to the world’s knowledge.  Really? Follow on in and let's discuss.

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Tags: MKE Film Festival

Image of an NFC sticker

Using NFC to make life a little safer and more awesomated

By: Michael Diedrick on Feb 8, 2013

image of an NFC stickerIf you’ve purchased an Android phone in the last year, you probably have a featured called NFC that’s never used unless you’re using Google Wallet, with despite how convenient it is, it’s a seeming west coast and Japan phenomenon.  But you don’t have to fly west to use NFC, it’s also a rather versatile way to make your life a little easier and maybe even safer.  Read more after the break.

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Tags: Leading Indicators Security

A Wonderful Friday

By: Michael Diedrick on Aug 10, 2012

Image of Mokey the office cat being carried in what was once a box of 12 packsWhat a wonderful Friday! It is finally not 100 degrees outside, our projects are moving along swimmingly, office cat is being as cute as ever, and we are enjoying the musical stylings of Lonely Planet on the office stereo. Recently we have had a few very technical and slightly stressful projects, but the team stepped up and met the challenge head on. Now they are fully functional and firmly in the rear-view as we move forward. Looking ahead we have some really cutting-edge, fun projects coming out way. Things are great! Enjoy some more cute office cat pictures after the jump.

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Tags: General News Inspiration Recent Work

SpeechTails an even better investment

By: Michael Diedrick on Jul 2, 2012

Illustration of a monkey and the words, Speech Tails: Online Speech LearningByte alumni SpeechTails is in the news again, specifically they they're certified as a 'qualified new business venture' by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp.  That means that new investors of SpeechTails will be eligible for a 25% tax credit on the amount they invest. Congrats Todd & Amy!

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Nerd Beer!

By: Michael Diedrick on Jun 26, 2012

image of a bottle of 8 bit beerAll the way from Manhattan... Kansas comes with out a doubt the greatest beer packaging I've ever seen. Just the other day, while our office sound system was playing the London Philharmonic's rendition of video game theme music, I was thinking about the massive impact these 8-bit video games have had on my generation. Forever seared into my frontal lobe is the Mario Bros. music (and apparently the ability to beat the first world with my eyes closed, no whistles needed.) It is fun to see my generation making an impact on the world.

Now, brewing a beer (that I have never seen in person) in the Midwest isn't the largest impact mind you, but none the less things from my childhood are appearing in the "real" world, and it is interesting. Now I'm just waiting for Limp Bizkit to play on the oldies station and I'm all set.

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Tags: Inspiration

New site completion tool

By: Michael Diedrick on Jun 19, 2012

Screenshot of Byte's new Progress Tracker, demonstrating what still needs content, what's awaiting approval, and what's completedIn the business of being a client, you get the advantage of working with professionals, so all the really hard things are done for you.  Except one: Content.  Even we sometimes forget how hard it is to get the content right.  Any time we forget how hard it is, we always remember when we upgrade our own website.  It's like a powered microphone on a well-lit stage.  

But the biggest, most painful part of this process is simply now knowing how far you are, how much of the content is done and how much has yet to be written.  This last time we updated our site, we created a tool that we're offering to our new clients: a simple progress tracker that shows how close we were from completion, and what had to be done yet.

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Tags: Business

Email icon

Easy Answers for Email Providers

By: Michael Diedrick on May 15, 2012

email iconWho do you recommend to host email?  Here’s an easy answer: Google. Now 10gb of space, excellent spam control, a tool designed for productivity, support for accessing your email via smartphones, mail clients and, of course, Google’s web interface.  All this adds up to the most professional system we’ve seen, the system that any competitor will have to beat.  Learn more after the break.

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Tags: General News Tech Simplicity

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