Year: 2007

No, that’s it. I’ve had enough. MySpace is rubbish on so many levels. It is a terribly designed, shoddily built application for bringing out the worst in everyone.
I joined a little over a year ago because a real-world group I had joined needed to find a way to communicate. I was underwhelmed with the application back then. I am still at a loss to understand how the entertainment industry flocked to this site, which was rife with server outages, bugs, errors, craptacular designs which were only made worse when the hackers started in. Then the schoolies came, then the toolies (too-old-for-schoolies). The media talked about it. Bands started getting cheap web hosting. Then, the ads came – in ever-more-overwhelming waves.
MySpace is an old idea, executed badly, which made some clever connections and got some good press somehow.

• I mean – for the Sake of Pete – when I log into my own home page, I’m presented with incoherent babble like ‘David is in your extended network’. Great start. I’m my own BFF.
• ‘View my friends’ status updates’, ‘You have X Friends’, ‘Change My Top Friends’, ‘Your network’ ‘Show My Friends’ – I’m getting confused – who am I? Who are you? And why can’t they decided if they’re first or second person?
• ‘Your Network: 202,973,661’ – Wait,… what?
• I have a ‘Ranking Score’ of ‘4’ based on ‘0’ votes?

Most people know crap when they see it. Don’t they?
Especially when they’re exposed to ‘how-it-should-be-done’ products like Facebook. (Facebook has its own problems, don’t get me wrong – but at least it’s a serious piece of web development, with at least an understanding of how a social network is supposed to operate.)
I’ve not had any negative experiences with MySpace. Nor any positive ones. That’s the point. It’s a nice place to visit, but I don’t want to live there.
I’m joining the exodus out of there. Farewell, MySpace.com/bonwag.
UPDATE: And no sooner had I posted, than this comes up on the wires:
No space for non-Optus Aussie mobile users

MySpace has blocked Australians from accessing the new mobile phone version of its site in order to protect its exclusive and probably lucrative partnership deal with Optus.

Well, if my leaving the site wasn’t a nail in the coffin, this certainly is. You can only afford this sort of crass arrogance if you have the goods to back it up. Like Google.
Seriously, I wouldn’t be planning any Christmas parties with MySpace.

If you’re using Instant Messaging (IM), be aware that there’s a new virus going around at the moment that takes control of a user’s computer and tries to send copies of itself automatically.
If a friend suddenly offers you an attachment to download for no apparent reason, don’t do it! Always double-check with the sender before downloading any attachments.
Always keep your virus scanner up to date, always check… yada yada yada… wash behind your ears, don’t take money from strangers.

I’ll be honest, when I saw that CHOICE had posted a review of free software, I was kinda hoping they’d be charging money for it, so I could post a blog entry about how ironic it was. As it turns out, it is a free article, and I am robbed of a pithy observation. Darn you, CHOICE!

Okay – this Social Network thing is starting to get scary.
The promise of the social/semantic web is this: that you can send your life’s bottled vignettes bobbing out into the vast ocean of the internet without having to worry about how shiny they look or how tidily they are written or where they will eventually land. It only matters what it means. The people who care will get it. Somehow.
So, it’s possible to Twitter away from a mobile phone or a PSP or a desktop or a carrier pigeon, and to post to a blog from within a browser or via email.
Now that sites are starting to link up – del.icio.us feeds are read by Jairu, flickr feeds are fed into Plaxo – who knows where your bemessaged  bottle will end up?
At this point, I’m not sure where this blog posting will end up: I know it’ll reside on BONWAG, and be copied to a few different places in different formats by my Blog engine – but it will also kick off a few little RSS reader applications I have on my home and office computers, as well as my Google reader account. Google will eventually index it and add it to their Blog Search engine. A few Blog aggregators will republish it.
Also – any number of people will get pop-ups or emails or messages notifying them of the fact I’ve posted a blog entry.
It used to be that the internet was anonymous – but now that all your social network chickens are coming home to roost, you can’t hide.

Writes Rodney:

Twittering this kind of stuff does not excuse you from writing blog posts. I want some more detail when you have a few minutes.

And so, here we have a few minutes, and I have time to disagree.

We had a wonderful holiday as a family. And I didn’t want to miss it. I made a decision this time around to actually experience this adventure and not to shift into journalist mode. This was one of the first times I’ve been able to get away for a major trip without mentally assembling blog or journal notes in my head, or experiencing the entire trip through a video camera viewscreen. (I can recall one trip from my youth that I have almost no memories of, because I stored them on perishable, losable magnetic video tape.)

So, no, thanks, bub. I AM excused from making blog posts.

But thanks for asking. :-)

Part of the joy of this trip is also the realisation that the kids are starting to develop their journalling and technical skills, so some people may be surprised to see Dad in some holiday photos! I’m actually very impressed with Charli’s photography skills – she’s taken some of the real ‘keeper’ shots this time around. You might start seeing some blog entries from the kids real soon now.

Having said that, no holiday is complete without technology. We did make the good decision to invest in a good quality Hard Drive Video Camera before we left, so we’ve captured some brilliant footage from shows at Disney that just need colour AND movement. The old Sony DSC32 still camera is still serving us well after 4 years.

Grand Total: 500 photographs (not including botched ones), and 10Gig of Video. I have no idea what duration that is – it’s so nice not to have to worry about tapes any more! 

[Side-bar: How long will it take before some smart camera maker puts out one with GPS? That’s when I’m upgrading, bud.]

And, of course, don’t forget the mobile phone for updating the folks back home – yes, via Twitter.

And the laptop for backing up the photos. And email.

Ainslie wan’t convinced we needed satellite navigation when driving through the UK, but our new SatNav travelling companion (known as ‘Navvy’ to her friends), saved us countless hours of mapbook juggling.

Huh. Maybe it wasn’t the low-tech holiday I thought it would be.

In any case, and to get back to the point, I enjoyed actually holidaying, instead of observing myself holidaying this time round. With the help of a few digital post-it notes on Twitter, i’m happy to re-live it, rather than to forget to live it in the first place.

Hey, it’s biblical – you didn’t see the disciples taking notes.