The machines are coming for us.
Not the all-knowing, all-seeing machines à la Agent Smith in The Matrix or Skynet from The Terminator franchise, but rather, machines built as service-based website integrations. We’re talking, of course, about chatbots: The popular interactive software applications that use language processing protocols to mimic human interactions.
Keep this to yourself, obviously, but answer honestly: How many different passwords do you use at one time? And, how difficult would it be for someone to guess any of them?
The venerable username-password combination has been around for as long as there have been individual computer user accounts—dating back to the punch-card era. Although we have tried various ways to make them more secure—requiring a mixture of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters or requiring passwords to be changed periodically—the fact remains that the only passwords that are truly secure (that is, difficult to guess) are impossible to remember.
It’s time to rethink user authentication, and some very smart people are doing just that.
It probably has not escaped your notice that there has been a lot of chatter lately about the Internet of Things (IoT). In case you’ve missed it: IoT is the notion that pretty much everything—from refrigerators, automobiles, and industrial machines to environmental sensors, surveillance cameras, and baby monitors can be equipped with circuitry that enables them to connect to the Internet, providing information continuously or on demand.
New Year’s resolutions: Easy to make, even easier to break. And if you’re the kind of person who makes New Year’s resolutions for other people (you know who you are), maybe you should resolve not to do that anymore because everyone hates it.
Here’s an idea: Instead of the run-of-the-mill resolutions like losing weight, calling your mom more often, and finally getting all that junk out of your garage, try some resolutions for your website. The thing is, your website won’t implement your resolutions by itself, any more than your brother-in-law will. So you will have to do them yourself.
Ready? Here are some New Year’s resolution ideas for your website:
Look, we get that it’s tough to manage your online presence. You have to worry about content creation, marketing, SEO, your website design, and a host of other concerns that demand your limited attention. Who has time to worry about optimizing a Contact Us page? Just throw in an email sign-up form, your phone number, and your address, and you’re good to go.
When it comes to web design, image is everything.
OK, maybe not everything, but it’s hard to deny that your web design interface is a critical part of your online presence. It’s tempting to imagine our audience as enlightened individuals who value the content we provide above all else, but let’s not kid ourselves—an unattractive and overly complex website is enough to repel even the staunchest of your supporters.
