Sir Tim Berners-Lee, widely credited with inventing the web in 1991, recently received the Turing Award. The prize is basically a Noble for nerds—and it includes a $1 million in funds courtesy of our friends at Google.

The early and sometimes goofy web that Sir Berners-Lee created is now a sophisticated, trusted and (sometimes hostile) reserve of information, ideas, and communities. We are blessed to have this wealth of collected information and connectivity and owe much to Berners-Lee and those early assemblers of markup and extensive system planning. As many programmers will attest, code is debt; behind the entirety of the web are countless hours of design and technical thinking and development that cannot and will not ever be repaid.

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I’m learning that what sets designers apart is their attention to visual details. I remember the first time I noticed bad kerning between letters. Once the uneven spacing stood out to me, I could never read that word the same way. As a student studying design, I’m learning the importance of these details. I see that it takes a trained eye to pick up on the little things.

I’ve had the pleasure of spending the past three weeks learning from, and working with the Manoverboard team. I’ve observed their attention to detail and ability to pick up on discrepancies instinctively, and as a result I’m learning to become more attuned to noticing these details myself.

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Many years ago I remember reading about Iceland and its use of Hydrogen powered cars. The country felt like it was in a world of its own, as if it was living in the future. The use of renewable energy is not a new idea in Iceland as the country has been in the game for over 100 years. The first hydropower facility was built there in 1904 and the country’s first use of geothermal energy for heating was in 1907.
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With every new year we tend to assess the many facets of our lives and focus on the things that are not working. This seems to be common with every passing year, so I decided to see how I could curb the amount of time I spent staring into my phone. Even as I write this, I have already been interrupted by the urge to check it.

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Three months ago we proudly launched Serving.Green, our web initiative designed to highlight the impact that the internet has on the environment, and what we can all do to reduce that impact.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I’d like to say a few words about what we did—from a development standpoint—to make the site as efficient as we could given our design objectives. I’ll be the first to admit that even more could be done, either by sacrificing some parts of the experience or by using techniques of which I’m not yet aware, but below are a few important tips and tricks that we can all do to make our websites more efficient. If you want to reach a digital green Nirvana, this will get you on your path.

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