Oct 7 2024
5 Content Marketing Ideas for November 2024

In November 2024, ecommerce marketers will have no shortage of topics for articles, videos, and podcasts. Examples include holiday shopping, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Daylight Savings Time, military families, and winter previews.

Done right, content marketing attracts, engages, and retains customers. But finding topics for that content can be challenging. Here are five content ideas your company can use in November 2024.

Holiday Shopping Guides

Image of a female using a laptop computer with a Christmas tree in background

Marketers can encourage early shopping with guides.

In 2024, just 27 days separate Thanksgiving from Christmas. This relatively short shopping season has some retailers starting early with holiday sales.

Initial marketing campaigns could include guides encouraging holiday gift-givers. One approach is to address popular items while reminding shoppers of the short season.

Here are a few potential headlines.

  • “10 Popular Toys That Could be Gone by Black Friday”
  • “5 Personalized Gifts to Order before Thanksgiving”
  • “21 Christmas Gifts to Ship Internationally — and When”
  • “10 Ways Early Holiday Buying Saves Money”

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

The first balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade appeared in 1927.

November 2024 marks the 98th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. The parade is best known for its amazing floats.

Now an annual and popular American holiday tradition, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade started with just the retail store’s employees wearing colorful costumes and some animals on loan from the Central Park Zoo. Soon after, Macy’s added bands and floats.

The first balloon, in 1927, featured Felix the Cat. In 2024, viewers can expect giant balloons featuring the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Extraordinary Noorah & The Elf on the Shelf, Marshall from PAW Patrol, Spider-Man, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

For content marketers, the parade could be an opportunity to inform and entertain readers.

Daylight Saving Time

AI image of a jogger on a street.

Lots of folks in the Northern Hemisphere will soon change their routines at the end of daylight saving time.

Sunday, November 3, 2024, marks the end of daylight saving time in the United States and at least 10 other nations, when households will set their clocks back an hour.

Germany, Italy, and France were among the first nations to implement daylight saving time. They each started in 1916. America added it in 1942.

For content marketers, the time change is an excellent occasion to publish list articles explaining how falling back an hour could impact shoppers’ attitudes toward a given product or category.

Here are some product category-specific article headlines.

  • Home decor store: “10 Cozy Home Updates for the End of Daylight Saving Time”
  • Online fitness shop: “7 Ways to Maintain Your Fitness Routine after Daylight Saving Time”
  • Coffee merchant: “6 Brews to Power through the Darker Days”
  • Electronics store: “5 Smart Gadgets for the End of Daylight Saving Time”

Military Family Month

Image of man in a military uniform surrounded by a wife, son, and dog in front of a house.

Recognizing the sacrifice of military families is a content opportunity in November.

Honorary holidays are excellent ways to recognize and engage important customer segments.

An example is Military Family Month in November. Marketers can produce content celebrating the resilience, strength, and support military families provide for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who defend the nation.

One of the best ways is family profiles. An online store selling pet supplies, for example, could ask customers to nominate a military family to be featured. The business could then interview the family and surprise them with a year’s supply of pet food.

Alternatively, marketers could recognize military families or promote a discount for that segment.

Winter Preview

Photo of a man snow skiing downhill.

Seasonal content like skiing can attract visitors from organic search and elsewhere.

November is an excellent time to publish a how-to article for the upcoming winter snow season.

For example, an online ski shop might publish:

  • Resort forecasts describing where to find the best skiing.
  • A preseason ski maintenance checklist.
  • Gear guides for backcountry skiing.
  • Holiday ski gear shopping guides.

Most ecommerce businesses can find preseason topics appropriate for their product line.

  • A women’s apparel store might publish a guide for sustainable winter fashion.
  • A nutritional supplement brand could produce a winter wellness series.
  • A pet supply store can create a holiday decorating guide featuring relevant photos and supplies.
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Oct 6 2024
A new law in California protects consumers’ brain data. Some think it doesn’t go far enough.

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

On September 28, California became the second US state to officially recognize the importance of mental privacy in state law. That pink, jelly-like, throbbing mass under your skull—a.k.a. your brain—contains all your thoughts, memories, and ideas. It controls your feelings and actions. Measuring brain activity can reveal a lot about a person—and that’s why neural data needs to be protected.

Regular Checkup readers will be familiar with some of the burgeoning uses of “mind-reading” technologies. We can track brain activity with all sorts of devices, some of which measure brain waves while others track electrical activity or blood flow. Scientists have been able to translate this data into signals to help paralyzed people move their limbs or even communicate by thought alone.

But this data also has uses beyond health care. Today, consumers can buy headsets that allow them to learn more about how their brains work and help them feel calm. Employers use devices to monitor how alert their employees are, and schools use them to check if students are paying attention.

Brain data is precious. It’s not the same as thought, but it can be used to work out how we’re thinking and feeling, and reveal our innermost preferences and desires. So let’s look at how California’s law might protect mental privacy—and how far we still have to go.

The new bill amends the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which grants consumers rights over personal information that is collected by businesses. The term “personal information” already included biometric data (such as your face, voice, or fingerprints). Now it also explicitly includes neural data.

The bill defines neural data as “information that is generated by measuring the activity of a consumer’s central or peripheral nervous system, and that is not inferred from nonneural information.” In other words, data collected from a person’s brain or nerves.

The law prevents companies from selling or sharing a person’s data and requires them to make efforts to deidentify the data. It also gives consumers the right to know what information is collected and the right to delete it.

“This new law in California will make the lives of consumers safer while sending a clear signal to the fast-growing neurotechnology industry there are high expectations that companies will provide robust protections for mental privacy of consumers,” Jared Genser, general counsel to the Neurorights Foundation, which cosponsored the bill, said in a statement. “That said, there is much more work ahead.”

Genser hopes the California law will pave the way for national and international legislation that protects the mental privacy of individuals all over the world. California is a good place to start—the state is home to plenty of neurotechnology companies, so there’s a good chance we’ll see the effects of the bill ripple out from there.

But some proponents of mental privacy aren’t satisfied that the law does enough to protect neural data. “While it introduces important safeguards, significant ambiguities leave room for loopholes that could undermine privacy protections, especially regarding inferences from neural data,” Marcello Ienca, an ethicist at the Technical University of Munich, posted on X.

One such ambiguity concerns the meaning of “nonneural information,” according to Nita Farahany, a futurist and legal ethicist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “The bill’s language suggests that raw data [collected from a person’s brain] may be protected, but inferences or conclusions—where privacy risks are most profound—might not be,” Farahany wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

Ienca and Farahany are coauthors of a recent paper on mental privacy. In it, they and Patrick Magee, also at Duke University, argue for broadening the definition of neural data to what they call “cognitive biometrics.” This category could include physiological and behavioral information along with brain data—in other words, pretty much anything that could be picked up by biosensors and used to infer a person’s mental state.

After all, it’s not just your brain activity that gives away how you’re feeling. An uptick in heart rate might indicate excitement or stress, for example. Eye-tracking devices might help give away your intentions, such as a choice you’re likely to make or a product you might opt to buy. These kinds of data are already being used to reveal information that might otherwise be extremely private. Recent research has used EEG data to predict volunteers’ sexual orientation or whether they use recreational drugs. And others have used eye-tracking devices to infer personality traits.

Given all that, it’s vital we get it right when it comes to protecting mental privacy. As Farahany, Ienca, and Magee put it: “By choosing whether, when, and how to share their cognitive biometric data, individuals can contribute to advancements in technology and medicine while maintaining control over their personal information.”

Now read the rest of The Checkup

Read more from MIT Technology Review‘s archive

Nita Farahany detailed her thoughts on tech that aims to read our minds and probe our memories in a fascinating Q&A last year. Targeted dream incubation, anyone? 

There are lots of ways that your brain data could be used against you (or potentially exonerate you). Law enforcement officials have already started asking neurotech companies for data from people’s brain implants. In one case, a person had been accused of assaulting a police officer but, as brain data proved, was just having a seizure at the time.

EEG, the technology that allows us to measure brain waves, has been around for 100 years. Neuroscientists are wondering how it might be used to read thoughts, memories, and dreams within the next 100 years.

Electrodes implanted in or on the brain can provide us with the most detailed insights into how our minds work. They can also provide us with amazing imagery, like this video that essentially shows what a thought looks like as it is being formed.

What exactly is going on in our brains, anyway? When neuroscientists used electrodes implanted deep in the brains of people being treated for epilepsy, they found order and chaos. 

From around the web

Infections are responsible for 13% of cancers. Here’s how to protect against four of them. (New York Times)

Scientists have created the first map of the neurons in a fruit fly’s brain. All 139,225 of them. (Nature)

Oropouche fever is surging in South America. Disturbingly, there are increasing reports of the virus harming pregnant women and their babies. (Viruses)

Women in heterosexual relationships already do more housework and household organization than their partners. Is technology making things worse? (BBC Future)

Do you sigh during your sleep? It could be a sign of something serious. (Nature)

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Oct 5 2024
Executive Director Of WordPress Resigns via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Project, officially announced her resignation, ending a nine-year tenure. This comes just two weeks after Matt Mullenweg launched a controversial campaign against a managed WordPress host, which responded by filing a federal lawsuit against him and Automattic.

She posted an upbeat notice on her personal blog, reaffirming her belief in the open source community as  positive economic force as well as the importance of strong opinions that are “loosely  held.”

She wrote:

“This week marks my last as the Executive Director of the WordPress project. My time with WordPress has transformed me, both as a leader and an advocate. There’s still more to do in our shared quest to secure a self-sustaining future of the open source project that we all love, and my belief in our global community of contributors remains unchanged.

…I still believe that open source is an idea that can transform generations. I believe in the power of a good-hearted group of people. I believe in the importance of strong opinions, loosely held. And I believe the world will always need the more equitable opportunities that well-maintained open source can provide: access to knowledge and learning, easy-to-join peer and business networks, the amplification of unheard voices, and a chance to tap into economic opportunity for those who weren’t born into it.”

Turmoil At WordPress

The resignation comes amidst the backdrop of a conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and the managed WordPress web host WP Engine, which has brought unprecedented turmoil within the WordPress community, including a federal lawsuit filed by WP Engine accusing Mullenweg of attempted extortion.

Resignation News Was Leaked

The news about the resignation was leaked on October 2nd by the founder of the WordPress news site WP Tavern (now owned by Matt Mullenweg), who tweeted that he had spoken with Josepha that evening, who announced her resignation.

He posted:

“I spoke with Josepha tonight. I can confirm that she’s no longer at Automattic.

She’s working on a statement for the community. She’s in good spirits despite the turmoil.”

Screenshot Of Deleted Tweet

Josepha tweeted the following response the next day:

“Ok, this is not how I expected that news to come to y’all. I apologize that this is the first many of you heard of it. Please don’t speculate about anything.”

Rocky Period For WordPress

While her resignation was somewhat of an open secret it’s still a significant event because of recent events at WordPress, including the resignations of 8.4% of Automattic employees as a result of an offer of a generous severance package to all employees who no longer wished to work  there.

Read the official announcement:

Thank you, WordPress

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Wirestock Creators

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Oct 5 2024
Branding Comes First, Says Sharma Brands Owner

To Nik Sharma, companies that pursue short-term profits at the expense of branding face long-term hurdles. They often rely on advertising to gain sales and then struggle when the cost becomes prohibitive.

His agency, Sharma Brands, counsels the opposite: Create a positive name identity first. Affordable acquisition and retention follow.

He and I recently spoke, addressing brand strategies, successful companies, and more. The entire audio of our conversation is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Tell us about yourself.

Nik Sharma: I run Sharma Brands, a growth agency. We primarily focus on pre-launched brands or those earning over $30 million annually. Our main areas of expertise are website development and customer acquisition and retention.

Companies that succeed over time have strong brand recognition. When you see their logo or ad, you immediately feel something because of their consistent and intentional brand work. Brand perception goes beyond their website and ads. It’s about how people talk about them and whether they evoke a positive reaction.

The brands that thrive today often have invested in building their identity through creators or influencers. On the other hand, brands solely focused on performance and marketing struggle, even if they’ve achieved significant sales through ads. For example, one of our clients generates over $100 million in annual revenue, but they’ve been overly reliant on Meta ads and are now finding it difficult to acquire customers.

Bandholz: What channels are these brands finding success on?

Sharma: The key is figuring out how to become part of the culture. Some brands excel through product placement on television, while others send thousands of products to creators each month. The creators create buzz. Some brands build national events or work with YouTube influencers who become the faces of their campaigns. This kind of content-driven marketing leads to increased brand awareness.

A great example is Waterboy, an Austin-based workout hydration brand with a recognizable presence on TikTok. Their ads succeed because folks already know the brand through organic content and short-form videos. This recognition means they don’t need to take customers through a funnel to build trust — it’s already there.

Brands without this level of awareness, especially those under $10 million in yearly sales, face real challenges. They struggle to scale their customer acquisition and maintain low cost-per-acquisition without a solid product-market fit. Relying on paid media alone is tough if you haven’t established a recognizable brand.

If you’re starting, you can probably reach $100,000 in sales using Meta funnels, but scaling beyond that without solid brand equity becomes difficult. Building a brand is like paving a road. It doesn’t necessarily require spending on reach or billboards, but it’s about associating positive emotions with your brand. Performance marketing is the cars driving on that road. If you haven’t built brand awareness first, it’s a bumpy ride, and you end up paying for it with a higher CPA.

David Protein, a nutritional bar company, is an example of a brand we helped that did it right. They launched with a strong brand presence, reaching out to content creators and seeding many products, creating buzz. They flooded the market with influencers talking about their product, which led to a successful launch.

Bandholz: Did they have those relationships ahead of time?

Sharma: Surprisingly, no. From what I know, much of their success came from cold outreach — just contacting creators and saying, “Hey, we have something new.” Novelty played a role, too. Their bar is 28 grams of protein with 150 calories, which caught people’s attention. The site converts exceptionally well. They also launched a TikTok Shop, which was interesting, on the same day with a flash sale. So they got a bunch of social proof in the first 48 hours on TikTok Shop, which helped, too. They also had big podcasters talk about the product, though I’m unsure if that was through paid partnerships or personal connections.

Jolie, the showerhead brand, is another excellent example. They’ve invested heavily in content creation, focusing on native content that fits the platform. They work with various creators who use the content as ads. Then, Jolie runs some light retargeting stuff on Meta to capture the demand. They’re generous with their influencer program, sending products to creators who may not have massive followings but have influence within their friend groups or local communities.

One of Jolie’s advantages is its subscription model. Every quarter, customers receive an easy-to-replace filter for their showerhead. The subscription ties into their branding — using their filtered showerhead will make you look and feel better. Canceling the subscription means reverting to the unfiltered version of yourself, which no one wants. This angle is a big reason for their low churn rate.

Bandholz: Let’s talk about website design. What seems to be converting well?

Sharma: Speed is still the number one factor. A slow site means losing customers. Beyond that, user experience is crucial. I like to think of websites as a physical store. The home page hero section is like the store’s exterior — it’s the first impression people get before they walk in. The collections page is like the inside of the store, and the product detail page is like the customer picking up an item for a closer look.

Many brands treat conversion rate optimization as simply changing button colors or tweaking text, but it’s more about closing the education gap. You want to make the customer feel foolish not to buy your product. For instance, on David Protein’s website, we break down the cost per gram of protein to show that it’s the most affordable option compared to competitors. This comparison not only justifies the purchase but also increases conversions.

Direct comparisons with competitors can be highly effective if you have a superior product. But if your product isn’t great, such comparisons can backfire, as customers will find better alternatives. We once launched a beverage brand backed by athletes, but it didn’t taste good. Despite the marketing and high-profile endorsements, it struggled post-launch because customers didn’t enjoy the product. No matter how good the branding or marketing is, if the product doesn’t deliver, you can’t rely on repeat purchases.

Bandholz: Where can people follow you?

Sharma: My website is Nik.co. My podcast is Limited Supply. You can find me @Mrsharma on X.

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Oct 4 2024
8% Of Automattic Employees Choose To Resign via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO announced today that he offered Automattic employees the chance to resign with a severance pay and a total of 8.4 percent. Mullenweg offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever one is higher, with a total of 159 people taking his offer.

Reactions Of Automattic Employees

Given the recent controversies created by Mullenweg, one might be tempted to view the walkout as a vote of no-confidence in Mullenweg. But that would be a mistake because some of the employees announcing their resignations either praised Mullenweg or simply announced their resignation while many others tweeted how happy they are to stay at Automattic.

One former employee tweeted that he was sad about recent developments but also praised Mullenweg and Automattic as an employer.

He shared:

“Today was my last day at Automattic. I spent the last 2 years building large scale ML and generative AI infra and products, and a lot of time on robotics at night and on weekends.

I’m going to spend the next month taking a break, getting married, and visiting family in Australia.

I have some really fun ideas of things to build that I’ve been storing up for a while. Now I get to build them. Get in touch if you’d like to build AI products together.”

Another former employee, Naoko Takano, is a 14 year employee, an organizer of WordCamp conferences in Asia, a full-time WordPress contributor and Open Source Project Manager at Automattic announced on X (formerly Twitter) that today was her last day at Automattic with no additional comment.

She tweeted:

“Today was my last day at Automattic.

I’m actively exploring new career opportunities. If you know of any positions that align with my skills and experience!”

Naoko’s role at at WordPress was working with the global WordPress community to improve contributor experiences through the Five for the Future and Mentorship programs. Five for the Future is an important WordPress program that encourages organizations to donate 5% of their resources back into WordPress. Five for the Future is one of the issues Mullenweg had against WP Engine, asserting that they didn’t donate enough back into the community.

Mullenweg himself was bittersweet to see those employees go, writing in a blog post:

“It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!”

Read the entire announcement on Mullenweg’s blog:

Automattic Alignment

Featured Image by Shutterstock/sdx15

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Oct 4 2024
Google’s AI Overviews Avoid Political Content, New Data Shows via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Study reveals Google’s cautious approach to AI-generated content in sensitive search results, varying across health, finance, legal, and political topics.

  • Google shows AI Overviews for 50% of YMYL topics, with legal queries triggering them most often.
  • Health and finance AI Overviews frequently include disclaimers urging users to consult professionals.
  • Google avoids generating AI Overviews for sensitive topics like mental health, elections, and specific medications.
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Oct 4 2024
The 10 Best Headless CMS Platforms To Consider via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Headless CMSs are becoming more popular as companies want more flexible content management tools.

These systems separate the content creation from how it’s displayed, giving more options for publishing content across different platforms.

In this article, we’re reviewing ten top headless CMS options. We’re examining them based on the following criteria:

  • How well they work with other tools.
  • How easy they are for developers to use.
  • How flexible they are for organizing content.

We’ve included enterprise-level systems and free, open-source ones to cover different needs and technical skill levels. This comparison should help teams understand their options and figure out which platforms might work best for their specific projects.

Here are the best headless CMS platforms to consider.

Why Should You Use A Headless CMS Platform?

Headless CMS platforms have become increasingly popular for good reasons.

They offer several advantages over traditional content management systems, including:

  • Flexibility: Publish once, display anywhere – from websites to apps to smart devices.
  • Developer-Friendly: Devs can use their favorite tools, speeding up project timelines.
  • Performance: API-driven content delivery often means quicker load times.
  • Future-Proof: Easily adapt to new tech without overhauling your whole system.
  • Security: Backend separation reduces exposure to potential threats.
  • Scaling: Grow your content or expand to new markets without hitting technical roadblocks.
  • Teamwork: Features like real-time editing streamline the content creation process.

While not a one-size-fits-all solution, a headless CMS is worth considering if you need a flexible, scalable content system that can keep up with changing tech.

10 Best Headless CMS Platforms

1. Sanity

Screenshot from: sanity.io, July 2024.

Sanity is a good fit for small to medium-sized teams prioritizing real-time collaboration and a customizable content studio.

In practice, Sanity works well for structuring and managing content, such as product information, for e-commerce sites. Its GROQ query language allows for flexible content retrieval and filtering.

Why It’s Good:

  • Real-time collaboration with live multi-user editing.
  • Flexible, schema-driven content modeling for structured content.
  • Customizable Content Studio for intuitive editorial experience.
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing is suitable for scaling projects.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Steeper learning curve for non-technical users compared to traditional CMSs.
  • Requires development resources for initial setup and ongoing maintenance.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use GROQ queries for flexible content retrieval and filtering.
  • Leverage Portable Text for rich text content with embedded objects.
  • Customize input components in Content Studio for optimal editorial UX.

Best Hack:

  • Set up a real-time preview using Next.js and Sanity’s Listener. Changes in the Content Studio will instantly update the front end, providing a true WYSIWYG editing experience for content teams.

2. Storyblok

Screenshot from: storyblok.com, July 2024.

Storyblok’s key selling point is its visual editor, which empowers marketers to create and manage content independently.

It’s been successfully used for multilingual corporate sites. The visual editor simplifies content updates, while features like field-level translations streamline localization.

Why It’s Good:

  • Visual editor for drag-and-drop page building.
  • Reusable block system for modular content creation.
  • Field-level translations for multi-language content.
  • Roles and permissions for content governance.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Some technical setup is required to fully leverage the visual editor.
  • Pricing can add up for larger-scale projects with higher content needs.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize nested components for flexible, reusable page sections.
  • Set up Language Fallbacks to gracefully handle missing translations.
  • Integrate with Sketch/Figma for a design-to-CMS workflow.

Best Hack:

  • With Storyblok’s Visual Composer within Content Stages, you can build and preview pages in a draft stage before pushing them live.

3. Hygraph

Screenshot from: hygraph.com, July 2024.

Formerly GraphCMS, Hygraph stands out for its GraphQL-native approach and Content Federation capabilities for unifying data from disparate sources.

Hygraph has been used to power blogs with user-generated content. Authors can submit posts via forms, which are managed in Hygraph. Content Federation allows merging this with e-commerce data to create shoppable posts.

Why It’s Good:

  • Intuitive GraphQL API for efficient content querying.
  • Visual schema builder for modeling content without code.
  • Content Federation is used to unify data from multiple sources.
  • Webhooks and API extensions for custom integrations.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Content preview capabilities are limited compared to some other headless CMSs.
  • GraphQL learning curve for teams new to this query language.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Leverage remote fields to enrich content with external API data.
  • Use Scheduled Publishing to automate content releases.
  • Set up Webhooks to trigger external actions based on content changes.

Best Hack:

  • Combine Hygraph’s Content Stages with Vercel’s Preview Deployments. Configure a webhook to trigger a new preview deployment whenever content is updated in a draft stage. This allows stakeholders to review changes in a live environment before publishing.

4. Contentful

Screenshot from: contentful.com, July 2024.

Contentful is an API-first headless CMS geared towards large organizations with complex content requirements.

It’s well-suited for global, multi-site content platforms. Content types and relationships allow for well-structured, multi-locale content. The app framework enables customizing the editorial experience.

Why It’s Good:

  • Flexible content modeling with validations and relationships.
  • App framework for extending functionality.
  • Localization features for multi-language content.
  • Multiple API options (REST, GraphQL, Content Delivery API).

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Higher learning curve due to extensive features and concepts.
  • Pricing can be prohibitive for smaller projects.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Link Fields to model content relationships and references.
  • Leverage Environment Aliases to streamline content promotion across spaces.
  • Extend editorial capabilities with app framework and UI extensions.

Best Hack:

  • Integrate Contentful with Gatsby Cloud for a powerful JAMstack setup. Contentful’s webhook triggers a new build in Gatsby whenever content changes, ensuring the static front end displays the latest published content.

5. Contentstack

Screenshot from: contentstack.com, July 2024.

Contentstack is another enterprise-focused headless CMS, with strengths in content localization and publishing workflows.

It’s been successfully used to build global product catalogs. Content types mirror hierarchical product data, varying by locale. Workflows enable synchronized multi-region releases, with granular roles and permissions ensuring proper governance.

Why It’s Good:

  • Roles & permissions for fine-grained access control.
  • Localization features for managing global, multi-language content.
  • Content scheduling and versioning capabilities.
  • Stackable per-locale publishing for phasing releases across regions.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • UI can feel complex for content teams used to simpler traditional CMSs.
  • There are some limitations around content relationships compared to other enterprise CMSs.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize the pre-built Field Editor extensions to customize the editorial interface.
  • Leverage webhooks to trigger external processes or rebuild content changes.
  • Use the CDN-powered Content Delivery APIs for optimal performance.

Best Hack:

  • Combine Contentstack’s Release Workflows with Netlify’s Deploy Previews. Create a workflow automatically generating a deploy preview whenever content is moved to a new workflow stage.

6. Strapi

Screenshot from: strapi.co, July 2024.

Strapi is a popular open-source headless CMS that prioritizes developer experience and customization.

It’s been used as a backend for developer-focused SaaS applications. Custom content types mirror application data structures, while the plugin system allows application-specific features to be added to the admin panel.

Why It’s Good:

  • Fully customizable API with the ability to define endpoints and logic.
  • Extensive plugin library for extending functionality.
  • Open-source, self-hosted option for maximum control.
  • GraphQL support is available in addition to REST and JSON:API.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • It requires more technical setup and maintenance than hosted solutions.
  • Less built-in functionality out-of-the-box compared to paid options.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize Community and Custom Plugins to add project-specific features.
  • Leverage Strapi’s JWT authentication to secure API access.
  • Use Strapi’s Draft System for content staging and approval workflows.

Best Hack:

  • Deploy Strapi on Heroku with PostgreSQL database. Set up GitHub integration in Heroku to automatically deploy from a repository branch. Any custom plugin code changes pushed to GitHub will trigger a rebuild of the Strapi backend on Heroku.

7. Directus

Screenshot from: directus.io, July 2024.

Directus is a unique headless CMS that sits on top of new or existing SQL databases, instantly providing RESTful API and GraphQL endpoints.

It’s proven helpful for projects with existing SQL databases. Installing Directus on top provides an instant content management layer and API without data migration. The platform allows for tailoring the admin panel to project needs.

Why It’s Good:

  • Instantly generates APIs from new and existing SQL databases.
  • Supports various SQL databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, Oracle).
  • Extensible platform with custom endpoints, webhooks, and event hooks.
  • Open Data Platform for powering data-driven projects beyond typical CMS use cases.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Requires SQL database skills for initial setup and data modeling.
  • Less content-focused out-of-the-box compared to other headless options.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Directus Fields to shape how your database data is presented in the admin.
  • Leverage Flows for automating data processing tasks on backend events.
  • Enable Data Accountability for granular activity tracking and versioning.

Best Hack:

  • Connect Directus to Metabase for powerful data visualization. By leveraging Directus’ SQL mirroring, Metabase can query and chart your content data directly, enabling advanced content analytics and reporting dashboards.

8. Umbraco Heartcore

Screenshot from: umbraco.com/products/umbraco-heartcore/, July 2024.

Umbraco Heartcore is the headless offering from the team behind the popular open-source Umbraco CMS.

It’s a natural fit for existing Umbraco users looking to adopt a headless architecture.

Document Types and Templates from the standard Umbraco CMS can be reused in Heartcore, easing the transition for content editors and .NET developers.

Why It’s Good:

  • Smooth transition path for existing Umbraco users.
  • .NET-based for integrating with Microsoft stack.
  • Umbraco Cloud for managed hosting and deployment.
  • Familiar, feature-rich editor experience.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Less adoption compared to some other headless options.
  • Requires .NET development skills for implementation.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Umbraco’s Compositions for reusable content structures.
  • Leverage Umbraco Deploy for moving content and configuration between environments.
  • Explore the Umbraco Marketplace for editor and developer tools.

Best Hack:

  • Integrate Umbraco Heartcore with Azure Cognitive Services for AI-powered content features. By calling Azure’s APIs from an Umbraco Controller, you can add capabilities like automated tagging, sentiment analysis, and image recognition to your editorial workflow.

9. Kontent.ai

Screenshot from: kontent.ai, July 2024.

Kontent.ai differentiates itself with features geared towards content operations and planning. It’s been successfully used for large-scale content marketing initiatives.

The content calendar provides a high-level overview of content across channels while ‘Assignments’ and ‘Tasks’ keep teams in sync.

Why It’s Good:

  • Structured, reusable content models and components.
  • Collaboration features like suggestions and comments.
  • AI-powered content insights for optimizing content performance.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Relatively higher pricing compared to some other options.
  • Less developer-focused compared to highly extensible options like Strapi.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Use Linked Items to connect related content across your project.
  • Set up Webhooks to trigger builds or notifications on content changes.
  • Customize the Web Spotlight interface for a tailored, inline preview experience.

Best Hack:

  • Sync Kontent with Airtable for a versatile content planning setup. Use the Kontent webhooks to send content data to Airtable. Then, leverage Airtable’s views, filters, and fields to plan and track your content production pipeline.

10. Prismic

Screenshot from: prismic.io, July 2024.

Prismic is a developer-friendly headless CMS focusing on sliced-based content modeling and multi-language support.

It’s been used for multilingual documentation sites with modern frameworks like Nuxt.

Prismic’s slices allow for componentizing common elements like code snippets and callouts, while the localization features enable translation management.

Why It’s Good:

  • Content Slices for modular, reusable page components.
  • Strong multi-language features with built-in translation management.
  • API browsers and development kits for popular frameworks.
  • Simple, clean UI for content editors.

Potential Drawbacks:

  • Fewer collaboration and workflow features compared to some enterprise options.
  • Slice-based model can take some getting used to for traditional CMS users.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Utilize Slice Machine for local Slice development and testing.
  • Set up preview URLs to preview on-page content before publishing.
  • Use Prismic’s Integration Fields with tools like Shopify and Magento for e-commerce projects.

Best Hack:

  • Integrate Prismic with Cloudinary for advanced media management. Using a webhook to send Prismic image data to Cloudinary, you can leverage Cloudinary’s transformation and optimization capabilities while managing images within your CMS.

Choosing The Right Headless CMS For Your Needs

To select the ideal headless CMS, consider these factors:

  • Content Complexity: Match your content structure needs with platform capabilities (e.g., Contentful for complex hierarchies, Strapi for customizable architecture).
  • Team Skills: Align with your team’s tech expertise (e.g., Hygraph for GraphQL users, Directus for SQL pros).
  • Localization: For multilingual content, prioritize platforms with strong localization features, such as Contentstack or Contentful.
  • Integration: Ensure compatibility with your existing tech stack through APIs, SDKs, or plugins.
  • Collaboration: For large teams, consider platforms with advanced workflow management (e.g., Kontent.ai) or real-time collaboration (e.g., Sanity).
  • Pricing and Scalability: Balance cost with features and growth potential. Open-source options like Strapi offer savings, while enterprise solutions like Contentful provide high-end features.

Explore options, run proof of concepts (POCs), and gather team feedback before deciding.

A well-chosen headless CMS and ongoing optimization will equip you to handle current and future content challenges.

More resources: 

Featured Image: A9 STUDIO/Shutterstock

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Oct 4 2024
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is set to look for life-friendly conditions around Jupiter

NASA is poised to launch Europa Clipper, a $5.2 billion mission to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, as early as October 10. The spacecraft will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. It will study Europa, a possible home for extraterrestrial life, through a series of flybys after reaching Jupiter in 2030. 

Europa isn’t a craterous rock like our moon. Its surface is coated with ice, and telescope and spacecraft observations suggest it harbors a colossal liquid ocean in its interior that holds twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans combined. Europa also possesses some of life’s critical building blocks: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. These conditions could be sufficient for life to have developed there, either in the depths of the ocean or in subsurface lakes. 

Europa Clipper isn’t on the hunt for extraterrestrial life, however. Instead, its team hopes to assess the moon’s habitability—how well it could support life. The probe will use its range of scientific instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, magnetometers, and radars, to collect chemical, physical, and geological data in a series of flybys. Promising results could justify a mission to land on Europa and search for life. 

Early this year, everything seemed on track for the planned October launch. But in May, mission team members caught wind of a potential issue with Europa Clipper’s electronics. Testing data had indicated that the spacecraft’s transistors, devices that regulate the flow of electricity on the probe, wouldn’t survive the intense radiation consisting of charged particles trapped in Jupiter’s magnetic field, which is 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. 

“The mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected,” NASA said in a statement. Disassembling the spacecraft and replacing faulty transistors could have pushed the mission’s launch window well past October. 

After months of follow-up testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Applied Physics Laboratory, researchers concluded that any potential transistor damage wouldn’t impair mission operations. It was determined that the transistors could be heated to heal damage, and the 20-day breaks between large radiation exposures would offer enough recovery time. According to the New York Times, the spacecraft will also carry a box of the probe’s various transistors so that the team can monitor for damage, a bit like canaries in a coal mine. On September 9, Europa Clipper passed a milestone review called Key Decision Point E, approving it to proceed for launch. 

After arriving in orbit around Jupiter, Europa Clipper will conduct 49 close flybys of Europa. At its closest, the spacecraft will come within 16 miles (26 kilometers) of the surface for detailed observations. 

For more on Europa Clipper, see MIT Technology Review’s feature on the mission.

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Oct 4 2024
AI-generated images can teach robots how to act

Generative AI models can produce images in response to prompts within seconds, and they’ve recently been used for everything from highlighting their own inherent bias to preserving precious memories.

Now, researchers from Stephen James’s Robot Learning Lab in London are using image-generating AI models for a new purpose: creating training data for robots. They’ve developed a new system, called Genima, that fine-tunes the image-generating AI model Stable Diffusion to draw robots’ movements, helping guide them both in simulations and in the real world. The research is due to be presented at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) next month.

The system could make it easier to train different types of robots to complete tasks—machines ranging from mechanical arms to humanoid robots and driverless cars. It could also help make AI web agents, a next generation of AI tools that can carry out complex tasks with little supervision, better at scrolling and clicking, says Mohit Shridhar, a research scientist specializing in robotic manipulation, who worked on the project.

“You can use image-generation systems to do almost all the things that you can do in robotics,” he says. “We wanted to see if we could take all these amazing things that are happening in diffusion and use them for robotics problems.” 

To teach a robot to complete a task, researchers normally train a neural network on an image of what’s in front of the robot. The network then spits out an output in a different format—the coordinates required to move forward, for example. 

Genima’s approach is different because both its input and output are images, which is easier for the machines to learn from, says Ivan Kapelyukh, a PhD student at Imperial College London, who specializes in robot learning but wasn’t involved in this research.

“It’s also really great for users, because you can see where your robot will move and what it’s going to do. It makes it kind of more interpretable, and means that if you’re actually going to deploy this, you could see before your robot went through a wall or something,” he says. 

Genima works by tapping into Stable Diffusion’s ability to recognize patterns (knowing what a mug looks like because it’s been trained on images of mugs, for example) and then turning the model into a kind of agent—a decision-making system.

MOHIT SHRIDHAR, YAT LONG (RICHIE) LO, STEPHEN JAMES ROBOT LEARNING LAB

First, the researchers fine-tuned stable Diffusion to let them overlay data from robot sensors onto images captured by its cameras. 

The system renders the desired action, like opening a box, hanging up a scarf, or picking up a notebook, into a series of colored spheres on top of the image. These spheres tell the robot where its joint should move one second in the future.

The second part of the process converts these spheres into actions. The team achieved this by using another neural network, called ACT, which is mapped on the same data. Then they used Genima to complete 25 simulations and nine real-world manipulation tasks using a robot arm. The average success rate was 50% and 64%, respectively.

Although these success rates aren’t particularly high, Shridhar and the team are optimistic that the robot’s speed and accuracy can improve. They’re particularly interested in applying Genima to video-generation AI models, which could help a robot predict a sequence of future actions instead of just one. 

The research could be particularly useful for training home robots to fold laundry, close drawers, and other domestic tasks. However, its generalized approach means it’s not limited to a specific kind of machine, says Zoey Chen, a PhD student at the University of Washington, who has also previously used Stable Diffusion to generate training data for robots but was not involved in this study. 

“This is a really exciting new direction,” she says. “I think this can be a general way to train data for all kinds of robots.”

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Oct 4 2024
These 15 companies are innovating in climate tech

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

It’s finally here! We’ve just unveiled our 2024 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch. This annual project is one the climate team at MIT Technology Review pours a lot of time and thought into, and I’m thrilled to finally share it with you. 

Our goal is to spotlight businesses we believe could help make a dent in climate change. This year’s list includes companies from a wide range of industries, headquartered on five continents. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend giving it a look. Each company has a profile in which we’ve outlined why it made the list, what sort of impact the business might have, and what challenges it’s likely to face. 

In the meantime, I wanted to share a few reflections on this year’s list as a whole. Because this slate of companies exemplifies a few key themes that I see a lot in my reporting on climate technology. 

1. Addressing climate change requires building a lot of stuff, on a massive scale, and fast. 

A handful of the companies we included on this list stand out because of the sheer scale at which they’re building and deploying technology. And we need scale, because addressing climate change requires going from tens of billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year to net zero.

BYD, for example, featured on our 2023 list, and it was a clear choice for our team to feature the company again. 

For a while, the title of the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) producer has depended on how you define an EV. If you include plug-in hybrids, BYD takes the crown. If you take the purist point of view and only count fully battery-powered vehicles, Tesla wins.

But now, BYD is knocking on Tesla’s door for even that purist title, outselling the company in the last quarter of 2023. The company’s dominant speed and scale at getting EVs onto the roads makes it one I’m keeping my eyes on. 

Other companies are still growing but making significant progress. LanzaJet just opened a factory in Georgia that can produce nine million gallons of alternative jet fuel each year. That’s only a tiny fraction of the billions of gallons of fuel used every year, but it’s a major step forward for alternative fuels. And First Solar, a US solar manufacturer, just opened a $1.1 billion factory in Alabama, and plans to open another in Louisiana in 2025. 

2. With climate impacts embedded in longstanding systems, we need creative new ways to tackle old problems. 

There are parts of the race to address climate change that most people are probably familiar with. Fossil fuels and their associated emissions are clearly visible in power plants, for example, or in gas-powered vehicles. 

But hidden climate challenges exist within familiar objects. Producing items from shampoo bottles to sidewalks can emit huge amounts of planet-warming pollution. We featured a few companies tackling these less visible problems. 

Sublime Systems is on the list again this year. The company is making progress scaling up its electrochemical process to make cement with significantly lower emissions than the conventional method. We also highlight a company working in the chemical industry: Solugen runs a factory in Houston, and is about to open another in Minnesota, making chemicals with biological starting ingredients rather than fossil fuels.  

3. Climate change is a vast problem that touches virtually every industry, so there’s a lot of work to do. 

As we discussed potential companies for this list over the last few months, I was struck by how tricky it was going to be to represent all the industries we wanted to. I could have personally picked 15 companies just working on batteries, for example.

We wanted some energy companies on the list, of course, as well as some in transportation. But then there’s also agriculture, chemicals, fuels, and what about climate adaptation? I think our final list shows just how massive an umbrella term “climate tech” has become. 

For example, there’s Rumin8, an Australian company making supplements for cows that can cut down on how much methane they belch out. And then we have Pano AI, which is installing camera stations that pair up with AI to better detect wildfires, which are worsening as the planet heats up. 

The world has a lot of work to do to make the progress needed on climate change. I’ll be watching to see what difference these companies are able to make this year, and beyond.

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

Check out the full list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch to get an in-depth look at all the companies we featured. 

We’re hosting a virtual event on producing climate-friendly food, coming up on Thursday, October 10 at noon eastern time. My colleague James Temple and I will be speaking with folks from Rumin8 and Pivot Bio, the two food companies on this year’s list. This event is exclusive to subscribers, so do subscribe if you haven’t already, then register here!

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

GETTY IMAGES

Another thing

The UK just shut down its final coal-fired power plant. It’s a major milestone for the country, which has historically relied heavily on the notoriously polluting fossil fuel. 

I dug into the data to see how the nation replaced coal on its grid, and how the rest of the world is faring on the journey to phase out coal. Check out the full story here.

And one more

James Temple wrote a smart essay that pushes back against the idea that AI is going to be our climate savior. There are certainly promising applications of AI across climate, but the technology is also power-hungry. And it would be a mistake to expect AI to deliver us from all of our problems. You should definitely give it a read. 

Keeping up with climate  

See the latest photos of the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene. The storm struck Florida as a Category 4 storm, but the highest death toll has been in mountainous western North Carolina, where devastating floods hit. (Washington Post)

→ Even people who have lived with hurricanes for years are facing tougher decisions, as Jeff VanderMeer discusses in a guest essay. (New York Times)

The immediate devastation from the hurricane is clear, but the long-term effects could ripple across the grid. Key equipment is down in western North Carolina, and there’s a critical shortage of repair supplies. (Latitude Media)

A major policy question in the US right now: where should low-emissions hydrogen go? (Canary Media)

→ Earlier this year, I explained why hydrogen could be used for nearly everything—but probably shouldn’t. (MIT Technology Review)

An oil executive spoke at an NYC climate event put on by the New York Times. Then, protestors shut down the talk. (Inside Climate News)

Charm Industrial is working with the US Forest Service on a carbon removal pilot project. The idea? Convert trees and other material from forest-thinning projects into bio-oil, then inject it deep underground. (Heatmap News) 

→ We covered Charm Industrial’s technology, based on corn stalks, in this 2022 story. (MIT Technology Review)

Rich countries pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to help pay for loss and damage from disasters fueled by climate change. It was a tiny fraction of what experts say is needed, and new funding has slowed to a trickle. (Grist)

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