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Google's Wave was to be a big hit. It seems to have failed to deliver. Read more about it here.
I admire Google for their decision making and embracing of new and exciting technology. But I also question their decision making. It seems they are prone to leaping in to support what appears to be exciting initially only to discover that it's not actually what the people want.
An interesting aside from the day-to-day of web development.
On the excellent Nantwich News web site I notice an article about the arrival at Brine Leas school of none other than David Cameron MP and Take That singer Gary Barlow.
All of which was a complete surprise, apparently.
You can read all about the visit here.
How does Twitter make its money ?
What is Twitter's business model ?
Perfectly valid questions answered in part here:
Twitter's advertising plans on Technology Review.
I confess to being intruiged by the Twitter phoenomenon. It's decidedly low-tech in its execution and rather ordinary to use but it has such enormous take-up.
It appears to tap directly in to the heart of what makes people tick in a social / voyeristic sense.
Something I have always wondered, though, is just how do those guys make any money ? Maybe they don't. Maybe they're quite happy providing a service buckshee. At least this was what I always considered. The link above irons out a fair bit and is an interesting read.
Mobile devices are evolving all the time.
Popular handsets such as the iPhone, Blackberry's smartphones, Palm Pilot and even Sony's PSP are allowing us to "get online" and view web pages on the move.
But web sites are often rich in content. Flash and JavaScript are not always supported and in some cases the downloadable content exceeds the memory threshold set by the device.
Rendering web site content to be viewable in a mobile device is for many site owners a vital step in maintaining visitor numbers.
There are a number of things worth bearing in mind when adapting your site content for mobile.
First, text is best.
Images are a nice addition to your HTML documents and often help to illustrate your writing. But bandwidth is at a premium and your 150k JPG is taking up valuable time. Your visitor is growing impatient so keep your images down to a minimum and always offer alternative text for your IMG tags.
Where possible squeeze your image files down to as low a filesize as quality will allow.
Text on the other hand is always quick to load.
Second, avoid partially supported technologies.
Specifically avoid relying on JavaScript and Flash.
Whilst some handsets offer strong support for both many don't.
In my experience it's far better to go for simple text rendering. Old school if you like.
Reliance on JavaScript for navigation, for example, will drive your visitor crazy if their handset does not support it.
I just don't think that we are ready to support rich content across the board at the moment. But that will change very quickly.
Finally, and this is something of a cheat, if you have constructed your web page and styling in accordance with standards outlined by the W3C you should be able to simply collapse your CSS and render your page "unstyled".
Remember to style your lists (UL, OL) correctly and you will still be in a position to present tidy lists perfect for mobile devices. Always maintain a style sheet and ensure that vital elements such as hyperlinks and images contain mandatory text attributes - i.e. TITLE, ALT where relevant. All of this helps to appeal to your regular visitor and helps your mobile visitor no end when CSS is disabled.
Unlike in the all-singing all-dancing WWW mobile visitors are far more tolerant of old fashioned, glitz-free web pages.
As wireless bandwidth and mobile handset technology advances these barriers will shift.
MySQL is my database of choice. It is perfectly adequate as a database for the kind of usage and demands that I place on a db.
In recent years the toolset has also improved no end. Gone are the days of me cranking up PHPMyAdmin. Far better to get in to the MySQL administration tools (which includes the invaluable Query Browser) directly and feel my around.
I feel comfortable with the toolset and will continue to use it.
The only concern with the database is its being owned by database giant Oracle.
The company bought the software by virtue of its acquisition of Sun. A deal completed in January.
Many developers had been concerned that MySQL support would simply fade away and they would be left with a decaying product.
Great news then that Oracle have publicy pledged support for the database.
It's a brief read but a worthwhile one.
News of speed boosts and tool improvements are included in the article.
An interesting feature currently in Google's Labs is their keyboard shortcuts.
Quite simply you step through the natural search results using the keyboard and hit Enter when you find the link that you're after.
None of it is particularly challenging to the developer but it's a nice way to open up the popular search engine to those web users who aren't too comfortable using a mouse.
Here is the link presented by Google to test the feature: www.google.com/search?q=rattlesnake&esrch=BetaShortcuts
It's remarkable just how much text is being flashed around the web these days.
Web sites like Twitter and Facebook being the key proponents with their handy integration in to most high profile blogs and information sites like the BBC, Guardian, Times etc.
Heated discussions, outrageous opinions, inflamatory quips, they're all there. It's just so easy to get your message in to the public eye from the comfort of your armchair.
It seems that every TV event, movie, sporting event is accompanied by Gigabytes of Twitter opinion.
10 years ago if you'd asked me to predict the internet trend in usage for 2010 I would almost certainly have suggested advanced visuals on web pages and a much richer experience in web sites.
This is partially accurate (despite the penchant for moving away from Flash) but I never would have predicted the Twitter phoenomenon.
Only Connect - play the game
Find links between the words in the grid and beat the clock !
Really not as easy as you might think. Wonderful coffee break stuff.
A number of years ago I worked as a software developer for a marketing firm that sold web-based solutions to high street retailers. As demanding as the work was it often left me time to reflect on precisely what was going on behind the scenes in the industry.
It didn't take me long to apply some useful rules and formulas to my work - most of which don't translate too well in to blog posts. It was purely hypothetical thinking that appeared to spawn a number of useful things to boost future developments.
One thing that I remember clearly is the morning that I had that eureka! moment. I walked in to my boss's office and proclaimed, "I've sussed it. I've sussed you out."
What I had "sussed" was the keyword in all of this marketing malarky; relevance.
I've always remembered that moment and it's always served me well.
At any given time I was either developing solutions that either created relevance or fed off it. To be successful in marketing is to be successful at communicating a relevant message.
Modern web / games phoenomena utilise this in a huge way.
Facebook with its reported 450 million users has grown at an alarming rate. There are several reasons for this of course but by far the biggest reason has to be its ability to communicate relevant information to its userbase.
When you log in to Facebook (assuming you are friends with genuine friends) you will be bombarded with countless messages and status updates. By virtue of the fact that you have a direct relationship to the originator of the message their message is purely relevant to you and as a consequence you are probably interested.
It is this level of interest, the glue that keeps you on the page and encourages you to a) delve deeper and b) respond with your own comments, that has become something of a nirvana for online marketeers.
Twitter's success is along the same lines although there you have a network of Twitter friends that you probably never actually met in real life.
It matters not. You use Twitter because you have created a relationship that in itself yields a high level of relevance. As banal and pointless as Twitter seems to the untrained eye it actually proves to be a fertile space for original thought. On top of such a creative foundation many useful things shall come ! I doubt even Twitter's developers are clear on where their product will ultimately end up.
World of Warcraft, the MMORPG hit of the last 5 years, works in much the same way. It is quite simply a socially capable network computer game in a fantasy setting. But it is so much more than that.
Although you may well play in a purely quest driven environment the fact that you exist in a purely online environment with countless other players means that you are in essence part of a hugely relevant social network.
What WoW does brilliantly is provides enough online to nurture an entire sub-culture offline.
A WoW guild has certain mechanics to allow it to survive in-game. Yet the real success with WoW guilds is in their management offline. Politics and corruption are of course rife but what is important is that people care enough to pursue what is ultimately in the best interest of the guild.
Updates, news and events from within the guild score highly in relevance to each of its members. Much like Twitter a WoW player creates his audience and creates his relevance.
Sometimes it's hard to see the next logical step or evolution with the internet. Big brands sit parked in their place and are not going to be displaced too easily. Facebook, World of Warcraft, Twitter et al are huge business. But then they don't quite appear to cover all bases exclusively.
They are all "closed door" in that they count you as a member of their respective club (and allow for rampant targetted marketing), but it is this perhaps that strangles any real growth.
Why did 450 million people sign up to Facebook when only 11 million signed up to World of Warcraft ? Perhaps the £8.99 per month that WoW demands meant that those who would otherwise entertain an MMORPG simply turned away.
Is the perception of WoW far more of a gamble to the end user than Facebook ?
Facebook is pretty acceptable amongst all sectors of society. Wow, perhaps, is the reserve of computer geeks with ironically limited social skills.
I think that view is out-dated. Of course you will always have that element but I suspect they are the exception as opposed to the rule.
I'd like to think that where we are today will evolve in to a medium that we simply "exist" in with pure virtual reality. A world where we are kept up to date through any medium that we occasionally dip in to via a static portal. i.e. PC, console. Better still a world that has rules more akin to reality. The risks of every day life ought to be a reasonable challenge to most in a virtual world.
Above all the key to the success of a broader virtual world is the creation, communication and maintenance of relevant knowledge.
I really do like to view pictures of the past. Especially I suppose photographs from the time of my youth in the 1970s. Everything looked as though it had had a Photoshop filter applied to it to water down the intensity of the colours.
I particularly like the first few photos that depict life in an American mining town. Very reminiscent of the opening scenes in The Deer Hunter - a strong film that I still find hard to watch.
Enjoy the gallery on Wired.com
Something that I always enjoy in a game is destruction and this is precisely what Blosics 2 does. Better still it does it in a sensible way. It has physics. The sheer delight of watching blocks spin through the air in slow motion chaos is something you rarely see in such throw-away Flash games.
Great fun.I managed to get as far as level 12 just now but getting there was not so easy. Level 11 in particular will have you spitting.
Hint: the angle and speed are not always as you think they ought to be.
This is great coffee break fun though.
Simple to learn yet damned hard to master - click to play Blosics2