Recently in Internet Category

I don't believe that mashup's themselves will ever be "mass market" in themselves. This is not the same as saying that a mash-up can't be a great idea and potentially lead to addressing a niche market (even one that becomes ubiquitous), but at the point it is no longer really (IMHO) a "mashup" and has graduated in to the big-wide world of reliablity, scalablity and robustness.

I believe that mashups themselve can't be mass market because they are principally there to solve a single person's problem. I do think that that the infrastructre and tools to build mashups can, however, become mass market and creating enough pieces to be mashed is already getting there.

It occurs to me that there maybe a fair number of people posting about O2's efficient and wholely applaudable management of the iPhone launch, who haven't read O2's Terms and Conditions for the use of their website:

View image

I draw particular attention to parts of section 2 of Content, namely:

Is defamatory of any person, entity or organisation

and

Is otherwise offensive in the opinion of O2 (UK) Limited

and finallly

Relates to the conduct of a business

is not looking good, partly due to this:

Also the o2 upgrade site is pretty much knackered!

In response the conversation on one of Scoble's shared items:

1. Google must not be evil, or, through inaction, allow evil to come to Google.
2. Google must obey orders given to it, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. Google must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

So the war for the one Microblog to rule them all has started, with newcomer Plurk.com. In fact it was so under the radar that Scoble missed it, and someone stole his name first...

I like plurk actually, and aside from the whole is twitter up? thing, I like twitter too...but which one wins out?

In my estimation, both of them. I like Plurk's time line interface, and "emotive" options (likes|loves|hates| etc), I don't like the lack of EVERYONE's plurks...hmm also "tweets" sound so much nicer.

I also want an Facebook app, desktop application, API and IM integration for plurk...but I'll give it the oppportunity to catch up with twitter before I complain about that.

There is something extraordinarily creepy about things like this shit...(I suspect this is an "only in America"?)

[Via Download Squad]

Probably only of interest if you are in the States but the Open Access requirement has been triggered in the auction of the 700Mhz spectrum band.

Now wouldn't that be nice if some thing similar happened over here....

I've always been amazed by the reaction of some players of MMORPG games. As soon as the server goes down for any reason that they weren't told about before they start mouthing off that its shite and that all the developers have been working on "broken content" and not bug fixes. FOR FUCKS SAKE get a freaking grip, I'd like to see any of them keep a system that supports 22,000 people at one up and running without any issues at all.

My personal favourite was from today when Eve went down:

these guys are morons. first they don;t do anything, like reply to our petitions. but they can perform unscheduled reboots of the cluster.

if there's more problems after the new server i'm quitting this. got better things to do then worry if i died or not while their servers crash. other than that this is a wonderful game. i'm loving it. but the problems are too many.

thanx guys. maybe next 10 patches will be bugfixes instead of new broken content.

How is that even helpful? or even reasonable or for that matter HOW does performing an unscheduled reboot make ANYONE a moron? If it goes down take the opportunity to go and do something else, you know what life is don't you...that thing that happens when you're not playing Eve? I'm sure you were able to fill it up with some other activities before the Internet was invented.

And before anyone gives me crap about "I've paid for this", just stop. Yes you've paid, so have I. Be reasonable, for your £15 per month you are getting a very complicated piece of software, the infrastructure and the content. This isn't a freaking board game, if it breaks it is a "little" bit more complicated to fix.

Having played a fair number of MMORPGs, CCP is much better at listening to their players than some of the other companies out there, many of whom have teams larger than CCPs. What you have them do? Reboot the server so you can get back to playing, or answer your petitions and let the game grind to a screaming halt?

So to the Noisy Minority, PUT UP AND SHUT UP. Your game will be back at the same time as the rest of us and we can do without the asinine commentry. As for the rest of us, lets start being less of a silent majority, putting up with the whining of the Noisy Minority.

I'm thinking of an experiment in blogging, in which the posts are not so much posted but recorded. In the world of modern instant messaging its dead easy to capture the logs of a chat between any two (or more) people. So why not take those conversations and publish them as a blog?

Admittedly you have to think about various issues of privacy and editing the conversation prior to publication, whilst minimising the amount of "editing" required.

Maybe some sort of IM plugin that would allow you to "blog this conversation" at the end of it. Hmm must think upon this further.

Most people would call it a little sad and pathetic, but I've been without an internet connection in my flat for the last couple of weeks (since before our Japan trip in fact) and whilst I have 'net access at work, not having at is actually quite disturbing.

Piro of MegaTokyo had a rant up recently about some stick that he recieved from fans of his web comic, who weren`t happy with the direction of the plot/storyline. Apparently some of his "fans" didn't think that a particular strip was very good, and in fact was very high and mighty, lording over the fans who could not read Japanese.

What a complete load of TOSH. I have to say it and this may offend some people but...the direction of the story belongs to the writer, not the audience. They may dislike the direction or feel that the creator has gone a bit squewif, and if they are really unhappy with that, well they can stop reading. Why should any creator be "required" to oblige his/her readers every time they whine?

I'm not saying that Piro has obliged them every time they whine, but my impression is that he's narked for a similar reason. Anyway I think the comic in question was very good, and for my part the not being able to read Japanese added to the frenetic-ness (is that a word??according to the spell checker no, but it is now!)

It appears that there's been a little spat going on over Wikipedia, the Open Source encyclopedia caused by a rather short sighted librarian. See the whole fight on TechDirt.

The whole shooting match stems from an article by Al Fasoldt on The Post Standard, in which he reports the opinion of a high school librarian call Susan Stagnitta. According to Ms. Stagnitta,

[WikiPedia is] not the online version of an established, well-researched traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself encyclopedia, without any credentials.

Apparently it is those "supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy". Despite the fact that it does have disclaimers that it isn't a traditional resource.

The interesting point in the whole argument is raised or illustrated by the following quotes:

"As a high school librarian, part of my job is to help my students develop critical thinking skills," Stagnitta wrote. "One of these skills is to evaluate the authority of any information source. The Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. It even states this in their disclaimer on their Web site.
-Susan Stanitta

and

I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia.
-Al Fasoldt

In the first Ms Stagnitta states that her job is to teach how to "evaluate the authority of any source", which evidentially she hasn't done with WikiPedia, and has decided that because anyone can contribute, it must not be valid. I'm sure that there are one or two (sarcasm btw) articles that might have been written by experts in that field.
On the heels of this is Mr Fasoldt's admission that he didn't know much about WikiPedia, which had been the subject of an earlier column that he had been aware of...surely in the realms of unbiased and reliable reporting (both requirements for being authoritative and apparently lacking in WikiPedia) he should have found out more and made himself an expert(temporarily at least).

I would also dispute Ms Stagnitta's claim that there is "no editorial review of the content". Surely being being editable by everyone, and easily restorable, this is the purest form of peer-review? A system that appears to work ratherwell in the realms of, well lets see...research.

I'm going to stand by WikiPedia, I have used it to great effect, its fast and accessible. Having been taught at the basics of research, I'm not going to rely on it exclusively, but it provides a good start. Afterall there is much to gain from contradictory information as this is for corrobative information, but then I might just be being sensible about that....

It seems that BugMeNot.com has had its hosting pulled by HostGator, according to this article on WiredNews. Fortunately its back up online and is now hosted by NearlyFreeSpeech.net.
NearlyFreeSpeech seems to be offering an alternative model to the typical hosting package: $1 per 1Gb of bandwith, and $0.01 per Mb per month for web space, which in theory means you only pay for what you use...which would mean that to host this blog (and the other stuff that runs on Phoenixproductions) would cost a grand total of $84 a year! The only problem I can foresee with this idea is that if you should get /.ed, as the hosting page says:

If your personal bandwidth account is depleted, your web site hosting will end automatically

Hmm a little clarification maybe here? Does it just end or will you get notified that it has and get a grace period to top it up? So if you get /.ed there's a good chance that your web site will actually just disappear!

That said looking at the hosting package it seems like quite a good deal.

-Update-
Thanks to Ian Ward who pointed out to me that the "J" after the line is meant to be a smiley...err I'd just like to say, typical of M$ to use a "non-standard" :-) way of doing it!

Was just looking at a web site that Sammiches recommended on the basis of a quite cool strikeout feature for links you've visited, when I can across this blog by Tony Chur, Group Program Manager for IE team, which contains the following paragraph:

We give users more control over their browsing experience in a few ways. First, we block most things from coming up without some user action; for instance, pages can no longer automatically start a download unless the user clicks a link or accepts the download via our new Information Bar UI. We also came up with a very original idea – popup blocking. J Sites can now no longer open windows except when the user clicks a link or button to initiate it. Similarly, sites cannot change your home page without a user click as well.

I draw your attention to the line highlighted...a Very Orginal Idea...popup blocking????errr...since when was that Original?

Senator Orrin Hatch's (R-UT) INDUCE looks like its running into a couple of problems, certainly if Rick Boucher(VA-9), guest posting on Lessig Blog, gets his way. He and John Doolittle have also introduced H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, which looks like it goes someway in redressing the imbalance created by DMCA.