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Showing posts from July, 2008

The Destruction of the Internet by Our Own Hands

OK, yes the title may be a little strong, but hear me out. User Generated Content I am sure we all agree, one of the best things about the Internet is the advent of encouraging user-generated content (user content). The most obvious example of this, Wikipedia . This is by far one of the best resources on the Internet for knowledge. What has made it so good? The fact that people with the relevant knowledge have the power to contribute and update . This is a huge deal because it opens the floodgates to a wealth of knowledge that could never be procured by one team, or a team of people dedicated to just “finding stuff out”. As you may have noticed on previous posts, I often use to link to “geekspeak” items for translation for any “normal” people that may come across this blog. Of course, Wikipedia is not the only user content site around, there have actually been things long before Wikipedia, and some after such as (but of course not limited to): Bulletin Boards Forums

Rob’s Been a Busy Fool – A Slap in the Face and a Rethink on My Strategy

Recently, I seem to have been really busy. Lots going on at work, learning new things doing some interesting stuff, reading lots at home for study. All sounds great right? Being honest, what have I achieved? Not a lot. And I am pissed . I always take my personal productivity really seriously. Its so important. I want to get things done, after some personal crap where I fell into a bit of a rut over the past few years (yeah that’s years - they were tough) I vowed I would never allow myself to come off the track again. Now,  I am not suggesting its that serious, but I just feel like my pace has slowed. Not good enough. So over the past few days I have been trying to dedicate some time to think and reflect on the pass month or so. What’s been going right/wrong? How do I think I can improve? What’s been going right/wrong? I think its important to always way up the positives as well as the negatives. However, it is sometimes REALLY hard to see the positives, since its gene

Logins – Why Use Email? Should it be Static?

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OK, this is something that has really been pissing me off for quite some time. Problem As I am sure most of you know, many website’s use your email address as your login. I think this is a great idea, since it allows you to keep the  number of login names you need to remember down and it pretty much guarantees uniqueness (since there can be only one email address, it’s yours).  The only problems I could think that could occur with this are: Someone has signed up using your email. I really doubt this would ever happen, since the site would (or should ) email the account address for confirmation that it is live (and you have access to it). If this ever did happen, you could easily take it up with their support staff. You have previously signed up and forgotten about it. 9/10 this will simply mean submitting a password request that will be sent to your email account and you can initiate the password reset process (if they send you your ACTUAL password – close your ac

Coining Some New Terms - "Twarkov" & "Mashout"

OK - So I have just got in from work and forced myself to get on Live Writer since I knew damn well if I didn't, another day would go by without a blog post - and I actually have a few things stacked up that I want to cover. So, here is the first - I would like to coin two new terms: "Twarkov" OK, yes, this one is a little bit of stupidity and silliness, but there is method behind my madness, so hear me out :P Recently there seems to have been a surge of spam bot's on Twitter . Now, this confuses me, because I really don't know what type of content they could be harvesting, or what they could hope to obtain by spamming on there. Since its obvious they are bot's, people will block them straight away, so they are not going to get any link-clicks. I have a theory in that maybe the spam companies are getting smarter and going to start targeting spam based on the topics of interest that you discuss (similar to Google Adsense ). So, "why 'Twark

Video Blogging - Worth Doing?

Summary Discussing my thoughts on communication in general, the Seesmic community and the benefits I feel I would get from video blogging (or "vlogging"). Links Seesmic - http://www.seesmic.com Me on Seesmic - http://www.seesmic.com/robzyc

Social Networking – How Social is TOO Social?

Had an interesting discussion on Seesmic last night. Starting with my first response here (you can view the thread from there) I only posted a few responses, but I think I had covered the points I wanted to get across, and I needed to get to bed since I had work this morning. So, what was the discussion about? Well, in short, I think there was two main points brought up across the various threads: People want to be confident that when they delete a video on Seemic, the video is lost forever and not available to anyone else. People felt uneasy with the “Share on Facebook” link added to the video page. This got me thinking, from this I think there are these issues that should be addressed: Ownership of content & licensing. Public domain and public discussion vs. privacy and “I take that back”. Understanding of what is actually being done with content on other social networks. Ownership of Content & Licensing This is an

Busy! Busy! Busy!

Just a quick note to apologise for the lack of posts recently, been crazy busy and struggling to find time to chill! Been working and studying a lot recently so my brain has been somewhat cooked by the time I get home from the office. I have a few ideas stacked up and hope to get these blogged soon :) Share:   digg it! |  del.icio.us |  Live |  Technorati |  Facebook