Shutting Down

That's it for this blog. Going to try something different next semester, keep things fresh.

Hope you enjoyed reading, and I enjoyed reading your blogs. And extra special thanks to those who commented continuously. I hope you guys continue blogging in some form, if you do let me know where.


Goodnight, and good luck. And i'll leave you with this little piece of beauty.

The Social Media Revolution

Excellent, excellent video

The King Of Pop

Michael Jackson’s Death: An Inside Look At How Google, Yahoo, & Bing Handled An Extraordinary Day In Search

The New Socialism

Fantastic article from Wired Magazine about how the Internet is fostering a new era of global collectivization. Make yourself a nice cup of tea, and take a small while to read it. Very interesting.

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

To anyone who thinks Twitter is vain, trivial or narcissistic navel gazing, think again. Iranians are using it to get the full story across to us, and Twitter have done their part too; rescheduling their maintenance as to avoid being down during this crucial time.

Twitter Reschedules Maintenance Around #IranElection controversy

HTML Wins!

“I’m not against Flash and I love the work that people such as Joshua Davis do,” he explains. “It’s brilliant, but I’ve always been in this other area of web development that I thought was probably better for most content. There was a point in the 90s when I felt like a sucker for doing HTML and CSS and telling people about this stuff. I looked at all these people who had pure typographic control and could do animation, all this great, fun stuff, and I was this jackass saying ‘No, we should use HTML’. I felt like a loser, but we won – HTML has won. That’s the amazing thing for me. People use Flash for film and they use it for what Daniel Mall calls ‘the experience layer’ as part of a standards-based site. So there are uses for Flash, but basically HTML, CSS and JavaScript have become the real platform of the web now. I feel very heartened by that; it’s the thing that makes me the happiest.

Interview with Jeffrey Zeldman from .net magazine.

Yes We Can!

The Design Director for New Media for the Obama campaign gave a talk recently.

A Parting Note...

That's it for this semester, and I'll leave you with this topical article from the Times, which questions web 2.0's relevance...

Break free of this world wide delusion...

Murdoch to charge for News websites.

Billionaire Tyrant (his own words) Rupert Murdoch plans to charge people to visit his News Corp websites, starting in 12 months or so, to fix (as he calls it) a "malfunctioning business model.".

What do we think of this? Would you pay? One of the sites I visit most often is the excellent website of The Guardian. I could see myself parting with a small monthly fee for access, but I think its a backwards step. Murdoch's inspiration, apparently, is the booming trade of the subscription Wall Street Journal. But they cater for a very specific market, would the Sun reader pay to read it online?

I certainly wouldn't pay for anything Murdoch owns....

Link (from The Guardian, freely accessible)

Adobe prepares Flash for high-def TV in the home

This is an interesting announcement, via Silicon Republic
Adobe prepares Flash for high-def TV in the home

Adobe has formed alliances with leading electronics and media giants, from Intel and Netflix to Disney and the New York Times, to bring its Flash platform to high-definition (HD) Blu-ray players and internet-enabled TVs.

Now, will iPhone 3.0 finally get Flash support?

JavaScript

A brief (if slightly harsh) history of why JavaScript became the world's most popular programming language...

The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language Has Become the World's Most Popular Programming Language

George Carlin - Modern Man

Is Google an "immoral menace"?

Henry Porter, writing in the Guardian, thinks so.

If indeed a new era of global responsibility has come into being with measures that actually restrain banks and isolate tax havens, it may be time for the planet's dominant economic powers to focus on the destructive, anti-civic forces of the internet. Exactly 20 years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote the blueprint for the world wide web, the internet has become the host to a small number of dangerous WWMs - worldwide monopolies that sweep all before them with exuberant contempt for people's rights, their property and the past.

What do you guys think?

Link

Viva La Revolution!

Firefox 3 becomes most popular browser in Europe for the first time ever...

Chrome beats the hackers..

I'm STILL waiting for Google to get us a Mac-version of Chrome...but in the meantime this makes very interesting reading.

From The Independent:
Chrome beats the hackers

Aviary.com launched, online browser based graphics suite..

This is quite something, the guys behind Worth1000.com, a very popular Photoshop-contest site, have launched a suite of feature rich graphics packages the work through your browser.

I've had a quick play with it this morning, and I am mighty impressed so far! Check it out at http://aviary.com

Is this the end of Internet Explorer as we know it?

From Silicon Republic...

Internet Explorer line to end as Microsoft leaps with Gazelle

It’s the end of the line for Internet Explorer, with reports indicating Microsoft’s next browser Internet Explorer (IE) 8 will be the last traditional version of its web browser.

What's most interesting is the news they might be using the WebKit engine..which would be huge in terms of Standardised Web Development..

Variety in Title and Body Fonts..

Nice little article from Build Internet about adding some variety in your choice of fonts...

Variety is the spice of life.

Do we take technology for granted?

Louis CK thinks so... "everything's amazing right now, and nobody's happy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGYx35ypus

Engaging the blogosphere...Ryanair v the Blogosphere

A couple of incidents occurred this week of prime examples of how NOT to engage the blogosphere, here is one...

An Irish web developer named Jason Roe discovered a glitch on the Ryanair website. He reported it, then found himself on the receiving end of some less-than-friendly responses from Ryanair staff. Needless to say, this thing exploded over the Irish Blogosphere, even making mainstream news outlets. How did Ryanair respond to this PR crisis? They called bloggers "lunatics". Hmmmm...

Any opinions on this? I think someone in Ryanair needs to get up to speed on modern marketing...

Beta version of Safari 4 clocks in at 42x faster than IE7...

Holy moly....this might convince me to move over to Safari....

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49301219,00.htm

JavaScript rendering times is becoming the latest battleground in the web browser wars..

Usability

We'll be taking about usability in greater detail, but this is an interesting article Smashing Magazine ran recently..

Common Web Usability Blunders