Facebook. What happened?

In 2000, Dave Gorman set out on a mission to prove that "loads" of people had the same name as him, by finding and meeting 54 other Dave Gormans (one for every card in the deck— including jokers.)

Just this morning, I quickly found a way to get in touch with 50 Dave Gormans, and also discovered that there are 352 people who share my own name and have registered on Facebook. His mission would clearly have been a lot faster with Facebook— although I doubt it would have made a great story. (Similarly, there's no way that his Googlewhack adventure would be a success if he embarked on the same mission today.)

Having (somewhat arrogantly) dismissed MySpace as being barely (if at all) different from the "old school" of free websites like Angelfire and Geocities, and "social networking" being the domain of schoolchildren who have plenty of time on their hands and just want to compare how many friends they have, in the space of the last couple of weeks it seems like everyone I talk to is suddenly using Facebook. From registering a couple of weeks ago to see someone's photos, then someone mentioning it in conversation the next day, to having new friends added on an almost daily basis. I know it's not going to be long until I start getting worried that I haven't checked my wall recently enough or something.

Typography: the new Grammar.

Typography is the art and techniques in using type; from the design of the individual characters of a typeface to using the correct punctuation in a word processor.

In much the same way that information technology using computers has mimicked and adopted terminology from the paper based office, the art of typography has moved on from Gutenberg's movable type printing press. (For example, we still use the term "leading" to refer to the space between lines of text, even though the strips of lead used in printing no longer have anything to do with the process.)

Before the word processor, typography was the domain of professional editors and typesetters. With the introduction of the word processor, users had much more control over the layout of the text; the distinction between a typewriter and a printing press became blurred. Todays word processors are closer to desktop publishing applications than electronic typewriters, with a wide range of font faces and sizes, page layouts, and even the ability to include images. Features that are available to pretty much anyone with access to a computer, but very few people are being taught how to use them.

Free Software, Microsoft and Software patents

A recent Fortune article touched upon the ongoing cold war between Microsoft and the Open Source community. In fitting with Microsoft's tendancy to only talk about Free Software in terms of not actually being free of cost (which I've always seen as a diversionary tactic, to avoid acknowledging the actual issues of freedom and ownership that anyone involved in free software will be quick to focus on), this was addressing Microsoft's software patents that Linux potentially violates.

The Human-Machine interface: The Screen

Probably the most important part of the human-machine interface when it comes to web design (and one which is all too easy to take for granted) is the screen. Apart from sound, it's usually the only way that the computer can give information to and communicate with the user- which makes it the most important way that a website owner can communicate with their visitors. Through the screen, the computer tells us what it's doing and— just as importantly— give the user feedback about what they are doing to it. It shows us what we've typed, whether it's what we meant to type, what we're clicking on and what we're pointing the mouse at.

Will we see a "Web 3.0"?

One of the buzzwords in the web development world is "Web 2.0"; a rather nebulous term coined in 2004 used to describe the "second generation" of websites.

The first generation of websites (retrospectively dubbed "Web 1.0") were based on the idea of a fairly static website being seen by many visitors- not much different to an online version of an existing shop, magazine, newspaper etc., but existing in "cyberspace", and without the overheads that go along with the "traditional" businesses.

Exactly what "Web 2.0" means varies depending on who you talk to.

Is the Mobile Web going to be a Dodo?

Technologies are constantly evolving. Existing technologies mutate and develop as new technologies are introduced— CDs pretty much killed off vinyl records, then the Digital Compact Cassette and Minidisc fought to do the same thing to tape recorders until the iPod came along and blew them all out of the water.

Sometimes, technologies compete in markets where competition fuels progress- for example, where next-generation games consoles try to outdo one another on features. Sometimes, technologies compete; where there isn’t enough room in the marketplace for a VHS and a Betamax to live side by side, one prospers and the other dies out. All in all, it's very much like evolution.

The Numbers are The Key, the box is opened and the secret's out!

Maybe it's just that I've been spending too much time following the developments on a mysterious island, but when the story about some secret numbers being leaked out onto the internet appeared, I couldn't help but wonder what they were going to unlock...

This wasn't about 4-8-15-16-23-42 though. This time, the number sequence was 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. (They're hexadecimal numbers- instead of counting ten digits from 0 to 9, hexadecimal counts in sixteen digits, following on from 9 with A,B,C,D,E,F- so the number "F" is actually sixteen, and the number "10" is actually seventeen. Hexadecimal counting is often used in programming, because of the way computers group "bits" of information in chunks of eight.)

What these numbers unlock isn't a spiritual mystery though- it was discovered back in February that it unlocks the ability to play encrypted HD-DVD movies on a Linux computer.