Web individuality

Jonathan Bowers, June 5th 2006, 3:44PM

There is no more eclectic a community than the world wide web and it is a hot bed of innovation and experimentation. But in order to make money it's a true test in individualism.

This weekend I heard the news that Fold.com was ironically folding. The Ajax based homepage that began in beta just 3 months ago has most likely been beaten out by similar sites that allow you to create your own individual homepage such as Netvibes.

There's no doubt that personalisation on the web is set to be a major part of the future as it allows us to assert our own individualism but another area that has allowed people to do this and make a living from it is the blogosphere.

Just as Fold.com was closing its doors I discovered Dooce. The amount of comments on each post shows the popularity of this blog. You only need to read for a few minutes to realise that you've been drawn in by the originality of the voice. And she openly admits that since introducing ads to the site in Oct 2005, she and her family are well supported.

Is it possible that individuality in others interests the majority of people more than the opportunity to present individuality themselves?

Tags: ajax, blogging
# Comment (0 comments)

Hotmail Devolved

Chris Norton, April 13th 2006, 10:02AM

Disclaimer: I know what 'beta' means!

Up until a few days ago I was using the new Windows Live Mail beta, instead of my usual Hotmail account. Now I'm back to good old Hotmail. Why? Mainly because the new system doesn't work in Firefox. In my tricked-out browser of choice the whole Live Mail system is actually worse than Hotmail. You can't seem to sort your mail, or type in a contact's name and have it replaced with their email address, images don't open up how I like them... it's been making me grind my teeth daily since I started to use it.

Now I don't know if Microsoft are planning on de-crippling the system for use in FF - as far as I can tell, all the AJAX (blimey, the A, J, A and X keys on my keyboard seem to be wearing out at the moment) bells and whistles Live Mail uses should be easy to implement on other browsers. But Live's inability to work on my favouite orange beast isn't the only thing that puts me off. The whole look of the system is artless; there's certainly nothing to compare with the friendly pastel shades and spot-on branding of Gmail. The name 'Windows Live Mail' is similarly awful, and seems to be another attempt to tie in this web-based service with a specific operating system. Isn't it a principle feature of the web that it is non-platform specific?

It seems fairly silly of Microsoft to assume that, if they migrate my current Hotmail over to this new, more Windows-ish, more Internet Explorer-ish system, that I will feel more inclined to stick with all their other products. I won't. If Live Mail doesn't get a lot better, when they switch off Hotmail I'll be considering a defection. Hey, I've even used Live Mail under IE and I'm still fairly unimpressed. Then again, perhaps one thing keeping me hanging back from a Gmail defection is this (prepare for a highly suspect metaphor): I don't want to put all my information eggs in one shiny, smiley and ever-so-slightly-too-powerful Google-shaped basket.

Tags: ajax, google, microsoft, websites, windows, windowslivemail, worldwideweb
# Comment (1 comments)

Who cares what AJAX stands for?

Chris Norton, April 3rd 2006, 10:03AM

First, let me introduce myself. I'm Chris. I spend my days at UKFast weaving PHP pages from cold hard text, fiddling with brain-blendingly complex SQL queries and dancing the mystical dance of CSS.

When I'm not dealing with that triumvirate of three letter abbreviations (let's not get started on the acc vs abb stuff), I like to try and get my head round new web tech. Currently the biggest noise in development circles goes by the rather unwieldy name AJAX.

And it's actually the word AJAX, rather than the technology it describes, that I want to talk about. The technology - or rather technique - itself is handy, and as soon as I had the chance I stuck a bit of it on our Reseller Area site (first person to tell me where wins my undying admiration). Being able to interface with the server 'behind the user's back' feels tremendously freeing, and there's going to be a huge range of stunning sites using this very soon.

But that word, ugh. AJAX. It makes me think of a cleaning product. It'll make less geeky types than me think of a football team. It sounds like the name of a design-by-committee videogame character. It does not sound friendly, it does not sound user-centric and, in its unabbreviated form 'Asynchronous Javascript And XHTML', it even scares as big a nerd as me. AJAX as a term barely makes sense, and it's being blown up to the same giddy buzzword heights as Java was a decade or so ago.

The web, as something designed to be used, should always be led by the user. When projects with names like AJAXWrite come out, it seems to me that us web types are letting the technology take centre stage. I don't ever want to have to explain to a non-computing friend what this mystical, horrible word means - I felt silly enough explaining it to my colleague Chris, and he's the sort of chap who installs linux on his microwave for fun...

Let's keep web tech behind the scenes, people - before it just get silly.

Tags: ajax, ajaxwrite, coding
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