Category: Technology

Contest Considerations from a Technical Perspective

Eric Grimm, Senior Programmer, offers up this advice if you run a contest asking for user generated content. I’m going to focus on some UGC (user generated content) aspects from a programming and security side of the equation. Now repeat after me: NEVER TRUST USER INPUT! This is true with a simple form that only collects names and addresses, but requires even more caution when you are allowing large blocks

January 27, 2015

Ramping Up Your Promotional Website to Avoid a Crash

What do Target, Maserati, and SodaStream have in common? They all had web sites go down due to heavy traffic during a promotion. We frequently see companies like this spend thousands on advertisement development and placement, only to have the campaign go bad because someone forgot to plan for web site traffic surges. Don’t let this happen to you! If you are running a promotion that is driving traffic

September 26, 2014

Knock Knock. Who’s There? Responsive Web Design!

Since responsive web design is all about affecting the appearance of a website, viewing a site that uses it well will help tremendously in understanding it. To see an example, launch Microsoft’s website in a new maximized window in any recent browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Now resize the window and slowly decrease its width, and watch how the site adjusts as the viewable area decreases. Images get

June 3, 2014

We’ll Take Our Password Encryption with Salt, Thank You

Privacy, security and encryption of user data is crucial to Marden-Kane and our clients. Our team of programmers works hard to stay on top of the latest research and trends in data security to ensure the highest standards of privacy and security are met on all data we gather, pass and store on behalf of our clients. Today’s guest post, from our former Senior Programmer Eric Grimm, covers why basic

August 5, 2013

Social Engineering is an Often Overlooked Cause of Social Media Hacking

Hacking usually describes the malicious activities technologists engage in to steal information such as social security numbers from individuals. Hacking into social media networks is more about temporarily causing damage to a product or brand and not usually directed at an individual. The latter requires far less technical talent but they do have an advanced set of particular skills called “Social Engineering.” What are social engineers? They are sort of

February 25, 2013

How to Capture and Store Sweepstakes Entry Data

How to Capture and Store Sweepstakes Entry Data Sweepstakes are a form of lead generation for companies. Many companies determine who is interested in products or services based upon the emails, comments and blog posts received on the sweepstakes registration form As this customer data is captured, it is stored in databases. Several types of database solutions used to accomplish this goal, some of which are better than others. Here

July 31, 2012