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Alexander Rehm

Alexander Rehm is a web designer, information architect and usability & accessibility auditor. He's currently working as a Director of Live Operations and has extensive experience of developing large-scale architecture and frameworks for online services, catering for millions of users concurrently. In his blog, Alex shares his musings on all things internet, usability, accessibility and gaming.

Royal Mail celebrates the joy of gaming with 12 new game-inspired stamps

Royal Mail has issued a set of 12 new stamps celebrating “the joy of gaming with pioneering and influential UK-designed games from the 1980s and 90s”.

Developed in conjunction with video game industry representatives and UK games industry trade body Ukie, the set includes four stamps presented in a “Miniature-Sheet”, that “chart the evolution of the iconic Tomb Raider game and its archaeologist adventurer, Lara Croft”, as well as eight further stamps celebrating other notable British franchises, including Elite, Dizzy, Populous, Lemmings, Micro Machines, Sensible Soccer, Wipeout, and Worms.

JavaScript frameworks security report 2019

The folks at Snyk published their state of JavaScript frameworks security report for 2019. It investigates the state of security for the Angular and React ecosystems as well as security practices for the popular JavaScript frameworks Vue.js, Bootstrap, and jQuery. Given the fact that Angular and React both have their proponents with ongoing discussions whether one or the other is a true framework, the report doesn’t intend to venture into rivalries but reviews each of them as viable front-end ecosystem alternatives, while focusing on security risks and best practices and the differences between them.

Read more: https://snyk.io/blog/javascript-frameworks-security-report-2019/

How to GraphQL

GraphQL enables a client to specify exactly what data it needs from an API, so instead of multiple endpoints that return fixed data structures, a GraphQL server exposes a single endpoint and responds with precisely the data a client asked for. If you want to wrap your head around GraphQL, here are two great resources to get you started. How to GraphQL is a free open-source tutorial to take your GraphQL skills from zero to production. Divided up into two parts, part one covers the core concepts of GraphQL while part two gives you a broader understanding of the GraphQL ecosystem.

Read more: https://www.howtographql.com/

Digital Wellbeing Experiments with Google

Everyone has a different relationship with their phones, but we all have something in common: There are always those moments when it feels that phones distract from life rather than improve it — when having dinner with friends and everyone checks their incoming notifications, for example. With their Digital Wellbeing Experiments, Google now showcases ideas and tools that help people find a better balance with technology and inspire designers and developers to consider digital wellbeing in everything they design and build. There are experiments that let you switch off from technology as a group, for example, stay focused by getting the right apps at the right times, or take the most important things with you on a printed “paper phone”. The code for the experiments is open-source, and if you have an idea for a digital wellbeing experiment, the Hack Pack will help you bring it to life.

Read more: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/digitalwellbeing

Global AI Survey: AI proves its worth, but few scale impact

Do you use AI in your company yet? Adoption of artificial intelligence continues to increase, and the technology is generating returns. The findings of the latest McKinsey Global Survey on the subject show a nearly 25 percent year-over-year increase in the use of AI in standard business processes, with a sizable jump from the past year in companies using AI across multiple areas of their business. A majority of executives whose companies have adopted AI report that it has provided an uptick in revenue in the business areas where it is used, and 44 percent say AI has reduced costs!

Read more: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-intelligence/global-ai-survey-ai-proves-its-worth-but-few-scale-impact

UK Gaming worth more than video and music combined

Interesting: The video games sector now accounts for more than half of the UK’s entire entertainment market, according to a new report by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

The industry is worth £3.86bn ($4.85bn) – more than double its value in 2007, and makes it more lucrative than video and music combined. The games market has grown, despite the fact that the physical console and PC games market shrank slightly in 2018, and digital also had a modest 12.5% growth.

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Having fun in Infinitown

Do you enjoy WebGL tech demos? Imagine a little town with perfectly square city blocks, a park, a coffee shop, a factory, a gas station and cute little homes. Cars and trucks are driving through the streets, but as you navigate through the town, you realize that there’s a twist: no matter where you go, you’ll never reach the town limit.

Infinitown is a WebGL concept made by the team at Little Workshop. It’s an attempt to create a city that is alive and fun to watch.

How it was done: Little Workshop generated a finite grid of random city blocks, then the viewpoint wraps around this grid, and thus makes it seem infinite.

Check it out here: Infinitown

Tools used: Three.js, Blender, and Unity