1-Web
Posted 21st June 2008 at 7:19pm by M1ke, tagged as Internet | Commenting Closed
Web design has been one of my hobbies for over three years, and I've put a lot of time into learning and developing my skills. One of the results is the CMS that powers this very site, and I've also completed a number of commercial design projects. To try and give more focus and business prescence to my web designing skills I've finally got round to making a site for just that purpose. So, if you're interested in having a site made, administered or improved head over to 1-Web and have a look at my portfolio.
Danger - Facebook Applications Can Easily Steal Your Details
Posted 2nd May 2008 at 1:35pm by M1ke, tagged as Internet | Commenting Closed
The BBC's technology programme Click has exposed a security flaw in the social networking site Facebook which could compromise privacy.
BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC exposes Facebook flaw
I've been suspicious myself of the level of access applications, which at the front will appear as a game or quiz, have to personal data. The BBC has proved that a simple application to produce random facts can steal the data not only of the user, but also of their friends if the friends have network level privacy settings. I urge anyone reading this to check the applications they use, and make sure their privacy settings are well looked after. Accepting yet another "pirates vs zombies" invite may have more serious consequences than you think.
Update: You can change Application privacy settings from the Facebook privacy page. I'd recommend you turn most things off, especially where you live, your picture and education/work information as these could very easily be used for identity fraud.
Social Connections
Posted 28th April 2008 at 7:44pm by M1ke, tagged as Internet | Commenting Closed
There has been a furor of activity for many months now over social data on the internet. You just may not have noticed, as its been mostly confined to the blogs that have grown out of that area even existing, which could be a case of biting the hand that feeds, or that they honestly think there's a problem. My own personal view is that there is a problem, and the problem is the eponymous friends list. Pretty much every website these days has a friends list - anything that isn't journalism or large community oriented anyway (though even some forums have headed that way).
The purpose of these friends lists is privacy and sharing, two ideals which don't always sit together, but seem to be quite snug on the internet. The simple idea is that if you're putting something on the internet you want your friends to be explicitly notified (as opposed to the more implicit act of them reading your syndication feed). It also means that certain things can be kept private - your personal details shouldn't be left floating on any public pages, nor do you really want photos of you publicly accessible. Certain people may be fine with this idea, but if sites exist that run off it, the majority will unwittingly reveal information they wouldn't otherwise be shouting down a high street. So the proof here is that friends lists have important uses, and for the internet to be fun as well as safe we need these restrictions on our data. The question comes down to who owns them.
There are a number of sites that have transgredded the boundary from a social website to a social network. Whilst Flickr, Last.fm and Ma.gnolia all share various items of our lives (photos, music, bookmarks), they offer only a small range of social features - enough, but not to be used without their main function. Facebook, Myspace and Beebo are all about who you know, and how you know them. Facebook has become the current market leader (at least in England and the States) because if its slick design, clever ideas and complete lack of any competition because no one will leave. Whilst this is an excellent business model for them, I worry about how this will stiffle other sites - the internet has always bread innovation through competition but with Facebook owning a more complete "social graph" than any other site people use, will they really leave? It added "Applications" last year, which meant other sites could leaverage its connections internally, but nothing gets let out. People who try get their accounts banned.
Having to build a social graph on each site doesn't work. Having a single site that knows all the info doesn't work. A few months ago, thanks to Scoble, I discovered FriendFeed, a great little site that aggregates my content from various sites into one handy place. Its a great idea and an interesting way to change conversations in "the blogosphere" but lacks one of the two features of the social internet - privacy. There are a few options, but if it adds more it will just become yet another site that we have to configure and rebuild our friends list for. Its a cool site, but no solution. What is the solution then? I think I know it, though something of this magnitude would need a lot of people co-operating to achieve it. The core of my design is based around an internet standard since before the web - email. The idea is based around an idea similar to OpenID. Most importantly the home, will be able to be anywhere. Your social data, your activity on the internet, and it should stay that way. I'll reveal more tomorrow.
Republican Bullshit
Posted 29th December 2007 at 12:35pm by M1ke, tagged as Internet | Commenting Closed
A long while ago xkcd (which seems to be eternally relevant to everything) posted a comic about people disputing science, and how it didn't matter - unless they happen to be in a position of power. The comic was called Beliefs.
As most people know there are a large number of Americans who are, for want of a better phrase, a bunch of slack jawed rambling idiots, and they support a smaller group of power obsessed Americans known as Republicans. The Republicans are to our Conservative Party what a bear is to a squirrel, and it seems that some of them have learned to use the internet. One favourite Republican thing is to deny anything vaguely scientific in favour of old wives tales or "religion" (I quote this because I myself am religious and believe nothing of the sort). Seeing as no reputable publication would actually support their views, theories and general foam-mouthed ramblings they've decided to make their own Wikipedia, posting crap articles without a public edit option because they know that the moment a normal person arrived and decided to do some editing they would end up with Wikipedia - because Wikipedia is generally correct. Of course being the propaganda nuts that they are they've also decided to try and discredit Wikipedia at the time, with articles such as "Wikipedia Scandals" and "Liberal Bias". It beggars belief that people like this are allowed oxygen, let alone firearms and the vote.
See this bullshit for yourself!
(P.S - hopefully the amount of times I've used the words bullshit, crap and Republican in this post will mean that this travesty of a site will soon be top for "Republican Bullshit" in Google)
Google Trends
Posted 8th September 2007 at 1:21pm by M1ke, tagged as Internet | Commenting Closed
Most people have seen Google trends, but I just thought I'd mention it here after seeing some interesting comparisons on CyberNet. It's fun to see how things compare in terms of what people are searching for, and now you can even see why searches go up and down as the page lists important events in the timelines of your search terms. As a demonstration here's a graph to compare Tony Blair and Gordon Brown:
It's quite predictible where the spike would be, but handily you can see each event on the page, as well as view graphs for where the searches came from (unsurprisingly most for this search came from the UK) and the languages they were done in. To search yourself, visit the site and enter however many terms you want to compare (or just a single one if that's what you want) with commas separating them. Let me know if you find any funny results.