As 2024 wraps us, we’ve been reflecting on what stood out to us this year. We’ve put together this year-in-review post to share with you our favorites from 2024!
Click the anchor links below to navigate to a specific topic:
- Accessibility, UX and Web
- AI
- SEO and digital marketing
- Work, life and community
- Books and podcasts
- Local spots
Accessibility, UX and Web
Overlay False Claims
“We have had conversations with clients and prospective clients where they have said they have learned that if they just install a plugin, they’d be instantly “accessible” and also protected from accessibility lawsuits. It seemed too good to be true, and as we dug into the topic we found it was, in fact, too good to be true.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“Some of the FALSE claims made by the overlay vendors:
- Adding the overlay product is the only thing the customer needs to do for accessibility.
- By using the overlay product, the customer’s site will automatically become compliant with the ADA (and other relevant regulations and standards).
- By using the overlay product, the customer’s site will automatically attain compliance in an extremely short period of time.”
Design Spells
“I love their newsletter, and the small details they find on websites.” – Pilot team
McMaster-Carr website
“One of the fastest loading complex sites on the internet. Virtually every single speed and caching trick in the book is being used here and it’s a well-engineered example to learn from.” – Pilot team
Coolors
“Really fun tool for generating color palettes! You can also view each color palette with different color-blindness settings like Deuteranopia, Protanomaly and more. You can also see how your colors would work with your site/products by using their mockup feature” – Pilot team
AI
The Uneven Distribution of AI’s Environmental Impacts by Shaolei Ren and Adam Wierman
“This article does a good job of describing the environmental impacts of using AI. They propose the idea of redistributing AI’s regional environmental costs to help decrease air pollution and the depletion of fresh water resources.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“However, implementing equitable-aware geographical load balancing presents some practical challenges. Even when dynamically balancing AI computing in real time, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to predict AI’s future computing demands to account for the long-term environmental impact. And ensuring a consistent level of AI model inference performance and quality is essential.
To tackle these challenges, we can utilize the history data and leverage state-of-the-art reinforcement learning techniques to identify the optimal AI computing management across geographically distributed data centers, prioritizing environmental equity while minimizing the overall environmental impact.”
Eco-friendly AI by Deepgram
“A really cool interactive tool to help understand different AI resources and understanding different types of data.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“AI interpretability refers to the extent to which humans can understand and predict AI model outputs. At its core, interpretability embodies the transparency of AI operations, a definition underscored by XCally, emphasizing the pivotal role of transparent AI in fostering trust and reliability.”
Creatopy AI
“It helps make ad creatives for display ads with ease. Great for those that aren’t designers and have clients who don’t have the resources for a designer.” – Pilot team
Claude AI Gets Bored During Coding Demonstration, Starts Perusing Photos of National Parks Instead – Futurism
“The headline says it all!” – Pilot team
A Linkless Internet by Collin Jennings
“I like how this essay tackles the question on how the current adoption of AI summaries is replacing traditional search and linking, relating it to the history of print media and indexing, and making a case on how it could impact the way we consume information in a possibly negative way.” – Pilot team
SEO and digital marketing
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
“This book should be required reading for anyone who owns a business, is responsible for growing a business, and especially anyone who is in charge of how a company communicates with its customers and clients. It is on Inc. Magazine’s top 10 marketing books of all time list for a reason.” – Pilot team
MarketingOclock Podcast
“It’s a weekly digital marketing podcast that’s actually pretty fun to listen to. They have relevant updates on what is happening in the world of SEO, PPC, Social, and Analytics. Plus their theme song is kind of a banger.” – Pilot team
Gap is putting a new spin on the same old song and dance by Katie Hicks
“Breathing new life into a legacy brand ad campaign is not for the faint of heart. This year, everyone I know in the creative space is talking about GAP. They capitalized on a Tiktok trend, honored the legacy of old ad campaigns and reached across multiple generations in one campaign. This 18-month rebrand (if you can call it that) is stellar so far, and I think we’ll be talking about it for years to come.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“It’s a seed of an idea that we want to grow into something bigger, but it’s one example of how we’re trying to lean into our heritage around music and make it relevant and modern for today.” – Erika Everett
Death of Search from The Atlantic by Matteo Wong
“Really good take on how instant AI answers impact the journey of discovery that comes from a Google search.” – Pilot team
The Value of Intent-Driven SEO in AI-Powered Search Engines from Microsoft Bing Blog
“Nothing groundbreaking, but it’s interesting for two reasons. For one, understanding keyword intent is a core methodology to how we practice SEO and PPC at Pilot. Also, it gives us a glimmer of how focusing on intent can help with both SEO and optimizing for new AI search tools, such as SearchGPT and Microsoft Co-Pilot.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“Prior to developing content that will best attract AI-powered search engines, it’s important to analyze and determine which keywords and phrases people are using to find your website or your competitors’ sites. This analysis can provide insight into the topics and questions that matter to your audience.”
An Anonymous Source Shared Thousands of Leaked Google Search API Documents with Me by Rand Fishkin, Sparktoro
“In the SEO world the leak of Google search algorithm code bits on Github was by far the biggest story. It gave us a tangible picture of what elements exist (and don’t exist) as ranking factors. There were some big surprises, and there were some confirmations of deeply held beliefs which had never been confirmed by Google.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“Many of their claims directly contradict public statements made by Googlers over the years, in particular the company’s repeated denial that click-centric user signals are employed, denial that subdomains are considered separately in rankings, denials of a sandbox for newer websites, denials that a domain’s age is collected or considered, and more.”
SEO Use Cases for Vectorizing the Web with Screaming Frog by Mike King, iPullRank
“Modern search engines have evolved far beyond keywords and into complex concepts; this is not news. But this article details an incredibly innovative and exceedingly technical use of a tool we use all the time—Screaming Frog SEO Spider, combined with JavaScript and AI APIs—to vectorize web content, unlocking the ability to visualize and analyze websites the same way that modern search engines do.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
“Google has been leveraging vector embeddings to understand the semantics of the web since… the update we knew as Hummingbird, but the SEO software industry has continued to operate predominantly on the lexical model of natural language understanding… Google has improved its ability to capture and associate information on a passage, page, site, and author level. Google moved on a long time ago, but with the rapid advancements in vector embeddings we can catch up.”
Work, life and community
Illinois Master Gardeners
“Tons of resources for connecting with your community through gardening and learning more about the local environment. Have gardening questions? Join the local Extension Horticulture Group on Facebook, or email a master gardener for free! ” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt
Illinois Extension Master Gardeners invest their time and talents in local Illinois communities to grow food, support pollinators, sustain resilient home gardens, and share their knowledge with others.
Are standing desks good for you? The answer is getting clearer. By Ars Technica.
“As a stander, it had interesting data about how beneficial (or detrimental) it is to stand all day. Standing is good, but keep it to under two hours. Sitting is okay if you keep it under 12 hours.” – Pilot team
Flux
“As someone who works a computer job and stares at a screen for 8 hours a day, my eyes take a big strain. I hate reading from screens as opposed to paper. This app makes it a little better on my eyes by adjusting the screen’s temperature based on the time of day. You can customize it too. Gamechanger.” – Pilot team
Books and podcasts
The Cool School: Writing From America’s Hip Underground by Glenn O’Brien
The concept of “being cool” has been sharply rising in the general public’s psyche decade after decade, but what does cool really mean? Glenn O’Brien sets out to explore this question by bringing together a collection of words from and about figures that would be considered the original hipsters, the original cool cats. In this book you’ll find chapters about people like Jack Kerouac, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, George Carlin, Hunter S. Thompson, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, and many more. – Pilot team
The Korean Vegan Cookbook by Joanne Lee Molinaro
“I’ve been cooking through this book throughout 2024! Really great recipes with a lot of leftovers.” – Pilot team
Glennon’s Dramatic Social Media Plan with Amelia Hruby “We Can Do Hard Things” Podcast
“As someone who has engaged with social media from multiple perspectives—professional, creative, and personal—I often find myself navigating the challenge of balancing its use effectively. This podcast offers valuable insights into the addictive nature of social media while providing practical guidance on how to transition away from excessive usage, all while still leveraging it strategically for business purposes.” – Pilot team
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
“I like that this book is serious and reflective, but at the same time, a really fun and encouraging read about some seemingly random topics.” – Pilot team
Notable excerpt from the introduction
“It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I’ve started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June.”
“When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
Local spots
“For all of our jazz lovers and record collectors out there. Located in Irving Park Rd & Kimball Ave, this store has the best $1 bin in the city. Great place to play the record lottery at.” – Pilot team
