What a great travesty we will face in the coming election if Ron Paul is not elected. I mean, that is what I hear. That is what the Internet tells me, so it must be true. Hey, I will admit it, I gave Dr. Paul the thumbs up in the Michigan primary, so I have nothing against him. Yet, my expectations do not seem to rival others elsewhere in the virtual universe. I knew he would not win the nomination. Apparently, though, it was a considerable blow to others. What happened? He was all the rage, a man of change, and a new destiny was upon us. How could the Internet lie? I feel so violated.
Is it really all that shocking, all that troubling to know, that Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Techmeme, Technorati, Yahoo!, The Daily Kos, World Net Daily, The Huffington Post and even Google do not represent the views of the common man? For those that rip into the news media for the glorification of events and celebrity tripe, I ask, how much more guilty is your favorite online destination? If ever there was proof that you should think for yourself, and not be distracted by the prevailing winds, then this should be it. Can we finally admit it – the buzz on the Interwebs still misrepresents middle America.
The Yahoo! Election 08 Political Dashboard should help convince you of that fact. Fear the buzz.
Back in August, 2006, I wrote a post titled, Ten amazing technological advancements you will likely never witness. The article still drives a large portion of the traffic for this blog, and covers a broad range of interesting topics. As we begin the new year, I decided to post something similar, with a slight twist. Instead of throwing out predictions, I am going to put forth those advancements we crave, and that are on the immediate horizon, but not for 2008. You can call them anti-predictions — in no particular order. Continue reading.
With the release of Firefox 3 Beta 1, Mozilla continues to demonstrate a commitment to Web standards, Web developers, and savvy Web surfers. Full page zoom, tagging, revised bookmark management and a revised download manager are just a few of the features technology reviews are spotlighting. Although plausible deniability was acceptable in the past, Mozilla now claims to have also plugged over 300 memory leaks, improving performance considerably. Continue reading.
I love watching the movie The Thing. The film I speak of would be John Carpenter’s 1982 remake, and not the 1951 classic, The Thing from Another World. Eleven men are holed up in an Antarctic science research facility, and come face-to-face with an alien organism buried beneath the ice. The special effects are reminiscent of the best the industry had to offer before the onslaught of digital pictures, but they now border on camp. Continue reading.
The Semantic Web, or (sigh) Web 3.0 as some might say, is certainly a hotly debated subject. To laymen, the Semantic Web often appears as a science fiction derivative masquerading as a technological imperative. Our lives will be changed forever, and the Web will morph into a complex, but organized intelligence capable of telling you what you need to know with pinpoint accuracy. Continue reading.
It is ironic that I would post an invitation to other developers to unplug while I type on my laptop at 6:30 AM. If any scenario was simple enough to demonstrate the problem, then that would be it. It is an unavoidable forgone conclusion that the digital age overshadows everything we do. Escaping permanently from a near electronic dystopia run primarily through the Internet seems like an impossibility. Seriously, you might be asking, why even bother trying? Continue reading.
You will not find Web standards, AJAX, blogging, Web 2.0, photo sharing, browsers, social networking, or even social bookmarking on this list. Even though some of those concepts have garnered significant and due attention, there is still a polarization among the early adopters, techies, and the vast majority of Internet users. That gap is shrinking as the next generation pushes connectedness to the forefront, yet, the Web innovations that we often drool over as Web site creators, are still a far cry from what the majority craves. Continue reading.
Posted by Brian
January 30th, 2008
1 Comment
