The Spam Zombies and the Captcha Apocalypse

Most captcha solutions are based on a text rendered hard to read (or to listen to) by adding some noise to it. And most of the time, this text is randomly generated and serves only one purpose: to stop the spam. Too many humans are challenging captchas all over the world at any time to let their brain process useless data.

What can we do to solve that underutilization of brain capacity?

Live website localization with Pontoon

Translating a website via a list of sentences or segments is sometimes quite dry to say the least. The provided files in textual mode, from Excel spreadsheets to Gettext .po, do not allow the translator to see how the translated text will be rendered in its environment: the interface.

How can we know for instance if a shorter wording would be more judicious when the text is displayed within a menu tab? Such sentence would be catchier as a page title, other would gain to be optimized for search engines, or more explanatory for a site map.

There is never only one possible translation, nor a best one that would fit in every situations: each translation must be adapted for an audience, a specific use, an aim, a layout, a context.

The European cookie law: solutions

In a previous post, we have seen how different countries have implemented the European directive 2009/136/EC, aka the Cookie Directive. To comply with the local laws of each country, your visitors must be provided with a clear information about how cookies are used on your site (even third-party cookies), and an easy way to consent (or not) to them. We will now see what solutions we can implement to comply with these laws.