Friday, March 23, 2007

Monday, March 19, 2007

Ask Nicely

INFORMATION REVOLUTION

Dear Ask.

Thanks for the invitation to your marketing party, dressed in it's 'hey! it's 1992 again!' lofi graphics. I worked out the invite was from you by the red blob on the poster - what is that, a bloody thumbprint? Cool!

Anyway, I just wanted to check what time your information revolution party kicks off. Your timekeeping seems a bit off. I merely mention this because I have been on the '15 year old internet' that you describe for... well, I've been on the *web* since 1994. And I started using the *internet* in about 1990. You do understand the difference, don't you?

I used to use your service. Then Google pissed all over it, and took a photo of it passed out at another party with a magic marker moustache - I think that that crazy Yahoo! might have drawn that one on. I used Bloglines too, until you bought it, and left it to rot. Guess whose RSS reader I use now? Hint: It starts in Google.

Your astroturfing campaign carries the unmistakable taint of last ditch desperation. You'll never make friends at a party if you're that fake.

So. Not. Cool.

In which the Internets perfom a miracle

We've established, previously, that my Dad's 80th birthday featured, among other things, bouzouki music. Alas, it didn't feature quite the right bouzouki music, as I couldn't track down a copy of the right Manos Hadjidakis album in time.

Mildly Diverting: Lilacs out of the Dead Land

So - the internets have performed a miracle. A completely anonymous person posted a link in a comment on the original post about the album. It led to a download of the mp3s of the album, and just in time for Mothering Sunday.

Whoever you are, anonymous donor of Greek music, thank you so very much!

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Runescape and Christianopedia

Two things of interest on listen again - Thinking Allowed on 'Runescape', and the Today programme discussing percieved Bias in Wikipedia

Thinking Allowed

BBC - Radio 4 - Today Programme Listen Again

Incidentally - Radio4 website, your URLs are horrible. Particularly those for the Today archive. zwednesday_20070307.shtml ? I know exactly where that Z came from. They're bored of seeing hundreds of files starting wednesday in their (manually maintained) file structure. Dear Today website: I know that you're in the process of redesigning at the moment. Can I suggest that you put the date first, so your files all go in nice chronological order? The day of the week makes your historical URLS unguessable without cross-referencing a calendar unless you're the kind of idiot savant who can be told any day in history and instinctively know what day of the week it was.

Can I suggest:

/radio/programmes/today/20070307/

As possibly the best place for that day's archive? You can put more than one page in that folder, too!

Metaverse Creeps Closer

GDC07 Clip: The PS3's Home - Kotaku

I've been curling my lip about the PS3. Too expensive, full of Blu-Ray (Sony's second stab at Betamax video...) and just... meh.

But now I have seen this video.

I got the feeling, back in the autumn, that Second Life was on to something. That there really was potential in this whole 3d inhabited space, but that somehow Second Life was... incunabular. Not quite there yet. Like the web back in 95, it was clunky, and counterintuitive, and full of really bad folk design.

So it looks like the PS3's Home is now the AOL to Second Life's open server. It'll be the service that takes these worlds mainstream, but possibly ultimately dies as it's (I'm guessing) a walled garden.

But this will be huge. Really, really huge.

I wonder if you need to pay for each bit of downloaded content, or if there will be creation facilities? Hmn...