So annoying! The joy of trying to get out of Aberystwyth at rush hour on a friday night.
Friday, 15 April 2011
Friday, 1 April 2011
Mobile blogging
I've just got a new phone - the orange san francisco. Seeing how the blogger app for android works, I wont have an excuse for not blogging now though!
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Diaspora
I'm one of those people who seems to be in the ever shrinking minority of people who are not on Facebook.
Basically there are 2 reasons
1) I'm in IT which means I'm on the web all day, If I was on Facebook I doubt I would get any work done. I've seen how it tends to take over peoples lives.
2) I have really grave concerns about privacy on it and who owns your data. Microsoft own a substantial bulk of facebook these days and a Russian company owns a substantial amount as well.
As someone who believes in Open Source software and in people having the freedom to own their own information I just dont have any trust in these big international companies to have an honest motivation of wanting access to what is in effect the worlds largest database of people.
However there are drawbacks of not being on facebook. Increasingly it's becoming the primary way people communicate and it obviously would be good to be able to keep in contact with friends.
That's why I'm keeping a keen eye on the diaspora project. If you haven't heard about it then it's basically four students who appealed for money on the internet to fund the development of an open source social media network that had security firmly at it's heart.
Their latest update indicates that coding is going well and that they are looking to open source the code base around September 15th 2010.
Would I join diaspora once it's launched? Maybe, I'll obviously have to know what others think first.
The other question is can something like diaspora ever challenge the dominance of Facebook? Obviously it's a difficult proposition. But go 5 years back in time and nobody thought that the dominance of Internet Explorer could ever be challenged and open source projects like Firefox have shown not only that it can be done - but that it can also push the dominant market leader into producing a better product.
In any area of life, competition is a good thing - and monopolies are bad in the long run for everyone. So I will be keeping an eye on diaspora with great interest. Can this open source project do to facebook what Firefox and Chrome have done to IE? Only time will tell.
Basically there are 2 reasons
1) I'm in IT which means I'm on the web all day, If I was on Facebook I doubt I would get any work done. I've seen how it tends to take over peoples lives.
2) I have really grave concerns about privacy on it and who owns your data. Microsoft own a substantial bulk of facebook these days and a Russian company owns a substantial amount as well.
As someone who believes in Open Source software and in people having the freedom to own their own information I just dont have any trust in these big international companies to have an honest motivation of wanting access to what is in effect the worlds largest database of people.
However there are drawbacks of not being on facebook. Increasingly it's becoming the primary way people communicate and it obviously would be good to be able to keep in contact with friends.
That's why I'm keeping a keen eye on the diaspora project. If you haven't heard about it then it's basically four students who appealed for money on the internet to fund the development of an open source social media network that had security firmly at it's heart.
Their latest update indicates that coding is going well and that they are looking to open source the code base around September 15th 2010.
Would I join diaspora once it's launched? Maybe, I'll obviously have to know what others think first.
The other question is can something like diaspora ever challenge the dominance of Facebook? Obviously it's a difficult proposition. But go 5 years back in time and nobody thought that the dominance of Internet Explorer could ever be challenged and open source projects like Firefox have shown not only that it can be done - but that it can also push the dominant market leader into producing a better product.
In any area of life, competition is a good thing - and monopolies are bad in the long run for everyone. So I will be keeping an eye on diaspora with great interest. Can this open source project do to facebook what Firefox and Chrome have done to IE? Only time will tell.
Revival
I've decided to revive this personal blog.
Lately I've been doing a bit of blogging for my work (head on over to http://aberwebdev.wordpress.com/), but there are only certain topics you can cover on a work blog so I feel the urge to revive this blog.
Hopefully this time I;ll update a bit more frequently - we'll see.
Lately I've been doing a bit of blogging for my work (head on over to http://aberwebdev.wordpress.com/), but there are only certain topics you can cover on a work blog so I feel the urge to revive this blog.
Hopefully this time I;ll update a bit more frequently - we'll see.
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