When is a website not a website?

The words "web" and "internet" tend to be used interchangably by most people- however, they are technically two very different things.

The internet is hardware- a physical network of computers, all connected to one another and communicating using a set of open standards (including TCP and Internet Protocol.) The "web" is software- a virtual network of interlinked documents, built on a set of open standards (including the HTML, CSS and Javascript.)

Telephone support

This is a summary of my experience earlier this week with Virgin Media.

The background; I'd just bought a wireless router and wanted to connect it. Should be a simple job; however, it wouldn't connect to the internet and was asking me for a username and password- even though Virgin's website said I didn't need one.

I know my username, but having lost the little card with my password that I was given when I first signed up some years ago, I decided to phone up to ask for this simple, tiny but apparently vital piece of information to be either given to me or reset.

So...

Information Overload: Is Wikipedia the new Google?

Around the beginning of the 20th century, there was a clearly identifiable problem with information overload; although there was plenty of information available, it was practically impossible to search through it unless you already knew what you were looking for and where to find it. For example, Medelev's experiments on inherited traits were virtually ignored for decades, until being rediscovered in 1900, some forty years after they were published. This meant that although early studies in genetics were being carried out at around the same time that Darwin was working on his theory of evolution, it wasn't until nearly 60 years later that they were integrated into a common theory.

With the advent of computers and the World Wide Web, it became much easier to share, index and search huge amounts of information. In fact, most of the ideas that modern computers were built around were specifically formulated to deal with the problem of information overload.

Do you love Flickr?

Last week, Flickr.com very quietly announced that it Loves You.



It's common for software to go through a release cycle of pre-Alpha, Alpha and Beta releases, with the Beta release usually signifying that the software is complete and is usable, but is still in a period of testing.

Flickr has gone through Alpha, Beta and, unusually, Gamma phases, each one being labelled in it's logo on each page, and each release phase marked by new features being released to it's members. The "Gamma" label was apparently a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that Flickr is constantly being tested and improved, while moving away from the image of being in "perpetual beta", which carries more of an implication of being an incomplete and unfinished product.

I think it's an interesting indication of the difference between the attitudes expressed through "traditional" desktop-based software applications and web applications. Just as writing styles for the web tend to be different to writing styles for print (taking into account users tendancy to scan online text rather than properly read it) the nature of web-based applications is inherently different to desktop-based applications.

Capitalism and the Commons: Proprietary software vs. Free software

Some issues and arguments go beyond what they appear to be about on the surface. For example, the ongoing debate between creationists and evolutionists clearly isn't really about creation or evolution- it's about faith in religion and faith in science; two very different systems that shape the way that we see the world around us. If you fundamentally believe that the bible is the word of God handed down to Man, then no evidence from mere people— however scientifically rigorous their research— will convince you that we evolved from apes. (After all, maybe the fossils were put there to challenge our faith…) If you fundamentally believe that scientific enquiry is the only true path to knowledge, then no unprovable hypothesis will convince you that there is a reasonable chance that we may have been designed or created by a higher power.

In a similar way, the issue of copyright and software licences (that is, "Free" licences vs. proprietary licences) isn't really about copyright and licencing; it's about freedom. The complication is that both sides of the debate believe that they are arguing on the side of freedom.