Blessed be the blog

Chris Norton, July 21st 2006, 10:37AM

A while ago the Web was in the grip of robots. Take two of the classic web searches (no, not those two, this is a family blog) - consumer electronics and celebrities. I'd be searching for a USB powered keyboard warmer and the latest pictures of Brian Blessed, and all I'd get was a hundred price comparison websites and some generic celeb-pic site with only a couple of fuzzy pics of Brian and a hundred links trying to sell me junk I didn't need, USB powered mouse-mat warmers? Useless!

These searches are bound to still have Google spit a lot of the old rubbish back at me, but nowadays the blogging explosion means that quite a lot of information on the web is now back to being produced by real, living, breathing people. Amidst the auto-generated pap, I'll typically be able to read someone slagging off the latest USB powered keyboard warmer (and saying that Apple are about to come out with one that'll revolutionise PC interface heating), and a few reviews of Brian Blessed's astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes.

The web is being repopulated by real content, now that it's finally possible for totally non-technical types and geeks alike to get involved. As of this week, India can get involved too - now that the Indian government has lifted its recent blogging ban, that's another billion people to contribute some real content to our web. Now, considering I was lying in the last paragraph and can find hardly anything about Brian Blessed's astonishing performance on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes, I'm hoping at least a few of the billion can get writing about this important matter. Real content! Let's go!

Tags: blogging, content, users, worldwideweb
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What we do on the web echoes in eternity

Chris Norton, May 5th 2006, 10:12AM

Lately I've been spreading myself all over the internet, in the same way as Jonathan Ross is spread across the TV and radio - admittedly without the wit, fame or eyeball-worrying collection of clothes. As I've said in previous entries, I'm a big fan of sites like 43things and last.fm, which are busy either recording what I do automatically or encouraging me to post information up about myself.

This phenomenon of online-ifying your personal life is really gathering speed, and I find myself worrying a little about the persistence of this information. Whilst I'm getting sick to death of myspace related stories, this one highlights the issue nicely. For a while back there it looked like El Murdocho owned your info for ever if you posted anything up - seems this has been resolved to something more satisfactory, but the fact of the matter is that information on the web stays there.

Myspace may crumble and take all those ridiculous abuses of CSS with it, lastfm may forget how many times I've listened to Dumb Dumb Dumb by Teenage Fanclub - and yet for years, perhaps for ever, archives will remain. Stuff on the web is publicly available information, and people like the Internet Archive (and Google's infamous cache) are filing it all away. Yes, future employers may be able to see those pictures on Flickr of you getting drunk and that rant about authority you posted on your blog. Even I (yes, even I) am a little worried that, if, say, I post a link to chucknorrisfacts.com - sometime in the future someone will be searching for me and, not being aware that Chris in tech told me to post it, might think I'm the sort of joker who spends all day on chucknorrisfacts.com. And I'm not.

My advice? Get up while you can and delete yourself! OK, so I've had no success in implementing this noble aim myself - because those sites are just too cool. Maybe that's the problem - cool vs privacy, fun in the present vs paying for it in the future. God, thinking like that, seems like I'm getting old.

Tags: blogging, myspace, privacy, websites, worldwideweb
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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
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Social Networking

Chris Norton, April 6th 2006, 3:51PM

OK so there's been a lot of news lately about Myspace:

• Firebombing!
• Police stings!
• Rupert Murdoch!

For those of you unaware (i.e. those of you who aren't as young and cool as you think you are), Myspace is a 'social networking' site that basically reproduces the grown-up web in a microcosm of epileptic-fit inducing flashing backgrounds, pictures of teenagers looking moody (don't they always?) and enormous lists of favourite bands. The site's main thrust lies in its blogging features and the ability to build lists of your virtual friends. Aside from this it's become a very musical place, offering the chance for musicians to upload their stuff and then build a fanbase with the friend list functions.

I'm not too interested in the controversy, its seems to me they're just a new spin on those old 'paedophiles lurking in every chatroom' Daily Mail-isms we've all run through a thousand times before. What I do like is keeping tabs on this new breed of community sites - and I'd like to pay homage to three of my favourites.

First up, Flickr. The massive popularity of digital cameras has fuelled all sorts of online photo-album websites, and this is a top-notch example. Flickr gives you plenty of space for uploading pictures, and all the usual titling, captioning and rotating features you'd expect. What makes it a little more interesting and a lot more fun is the tagging aspect. Just as we tag our posts on this blog, so you tag photos on Flickr. Users searching for 'disturbing animal' are then able to get such highly useful results as... this. OK, so it all depends on how well people tag their photos, but coupled with the tags is a large community and the ability to post comments on other peoples photos, and it's extremely interesting to see which of your photos are the most frequently viewed.

Yet another tag-heavy system is 43 things. It's a kind of networked to-do list, a space to track either your mundane plans for the near future or your desire to become a pirate (154 people want to do that?! We all know ninjas are better). You can post blog-style entries on your progress on any of your things, and you can roam around other people's lists - at a click of the mouse you can add appropriate someone else's desire to learn Swahili as one your own aims. One of the nicest things about the site is the idea of 'cheers' - if you approve of someone's thing, you can give them a cheer, they'll note your approval and then you can thank them via private messages. You then become friends, et voila, Bob's your uncle, social networking at its finest.

One of my most-visited sites over the last year has been Last.FM, formerly the wonderfully named Audioscrobbler. It's my favourite because it combines music and statistics - perhaps my favourite things outside of robots and Subway stickers. You install a plug-in for your PC music player of choice (iTunes for me), and then that sneaks about in the background as you listen to music, compiling a list of your favourite artists and tracks on your Last.FM user page. Very interesting to find out just how often I listen to my strangely mis-matched collection of Elvis Costello and Girls Aloud records, but even more interesting to be told who else on the system is listening to a similar mix of music - and based on that, the system then makes recommendations as to stuff I might like. You can even listen to web-streaming radio stations based on your neighbour's musical tastes. Of course, as with all these new social networking sites, there's plenty of room for improvement - apparently, I should be listening to a lot more Billy Joel. Hmmm.

Tags: myspace, socialnetworking, websites, worldwideweb
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Internet training for new recruits

Jonathan Bowers, March 28th 2006, 4:23PM

I am involved in training some new recruits at UKFast this week and I've realised that the subject is so huge that you can't assume what people will know and what they won’t.

As we're a hosting company, the core of the training is about our services and how they fit into the grand scheme of things - but naturally there's a mass of important history and culture that we need to draw from.

We were deep into domain name servers and propagation this afternoon, when someone said; "Hold on a second, what's the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?"

It's a hugely valid question and having talked around the subject in regards to email provisions, web hosting and application servers earlier on, my colleague George and I had neglected to realise some of the basics for the group.

With that sorted, they're now getting through clustering and load balancing, so I hope they are not experiencing a mid afternoon lull!

For me, it's difficult to know how to go about giving a comprehensive yet concise run down of what you need to know about the Net. Perhaps someone can recommend a site or two that can help?

Tags: internet, training, worldwideweb
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