Articles tagged as "web"

Links are the primary way we navigate the internet. With just a simple string of characters I can point you to specific resource on another server that I think you should check out for one reason or another. This can be incredibly useful for citations, in which researchers want to include many articles worth of knowledge to support their claims, but cannot fit all that text within their own article. These get included at the end of the article, in the References section, and historically they would have included metadata to allow someone to go find a physical resource in a library. In the digital age it is now common and expected to digitally link to the location of the resource on the internet. It is vital that the link placed in the references stays stable and resolveable, because once published scientific papers usually aren’t edited unless there is a necessary revision or retraction. So, what defines these “permalinks”, and are they really as stable as we think?

Universal Resource Locator (URL) shorteners have been around since the early 2000’s[1]. A URL shortener takes an otherwise ugly hyperlink and converts it to something short and catchy. This can be helpful if users have to manually type in an address, such as from a PowerPoint presentation, or if the number of characters are limited (such as on an advertisement). However, they also normalize following links where we have no idea what is on the other end. Additionally, using a URL shortening service means that critical communication can be out of the control of the original organization. Here I’ll outline the benefits and pitfalls of URL shortening (as I see them) and why I ultimately don’t see why they are worth it.

Ads are annoying – that is as true now as it was five years ago. According to a report by Blockthrough and Eyeo[1], usage of adblockers is on the rise, growing at a rate of approximately 30% per year. With just under a billion people estimated to be using adblockers of some kind, advertisers are beginning to take note, and browsers like Google Chrome are beginning to limit the ability of adblocking extensions to work effectively. This means that ads may begin to again have the upper hand, and that can have terrible effects on how people browse the modern web. There is a point at which ads begin to completely take over a site, and affect the safety of the user, and here I will outline a couple of sites in which this is the case.