Entries Tagged 'Web' ↓

Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia

It’s actually not that long a list, I’d have expected it to be longer if I had thought about it. Anyway it begins with a few little digs before launching into the list:

One statement that has been sometimes called an error is Britannica’s statement in the article “Encyclopedia Britannica” that it is the “oldest and largest English-language general encyclopedia.” If Wikipedia’s claim to be an encyclopedia is accepted, then this statement is erroneous because Wikipedia contains more words and articles than Britannica. Although Britannica has at times referred to Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, it has also referred to Wikipedia as “the Internet database that allows anyone… to edit” when responding to Nature’s defense of Wikipedia, apparently rejecting Wikipedia’s claim to be an encyclopedia. It is perhaps worth noting that the accuracy of the label “oldest English-language general encyclopedia” hinges on the meaning of the words “oldest” and “general”. Encyclopedia Britannica is certainly not the first English-language encyclopedia; though it may be considered the one with the greatest longevity, as many of the earlier English-language encyclopedias are no longer published.

They have a point about the “largest” but I think it’s pretty reasonable to use “oldest” to mean “oldest to have survived”.

I was actually thinking of getting the Encyclopedia Britannica again a while ago. Wikipedia is brilliant but if you were to list the errors that it has published at one time or another… 

So, ultimately it looks like we can learn an interesting tidbit from this whole mini-debacle: if the Parakey co-founder is chipping in on something pertaining to friend request confirmation, that could be a cool peek into what’s to come from Facebook’s new buy.Well they’ve bought some of Mozilla’s brains anyway. Should provide some interesting competion to Google Gears. I wonder if this will mean there’s a chance the platform will open up?

BBC NEWS | Business | Social site Facebook buys Parakey

Social networking site Facebook has bought internet start-up, Parakey, run by two of the co-creators of the popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox.

Parakey is described as a platform that “bridges the gap between information on the web and the desktop”.

As part of the deal, which is for an undisclosed sum, Mozilla Firefox founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt will help to develop the Facebook site.

[EDIT: Just reading about a Facebook glitch and lo and behold, it’s Blake Ross who is doing the announcing:

Very interesting… ]

From Jackson West’s Top Ten Abominations of Web Video Lingo (NewTeeVee)

Piracy: It’s far too awesomely swashbuckling a name to give to an altogether mundane activity — using digital network technology to send and receive data, as though digital network technology was built to do just that. Oh, you’re in the restricting-access-to-data business? Good luck with that. You can’t keelhaul us all, guvnor! Arrrr.

Information Archictects Japan has put out their updated Web Trend Map for 2007:

You can download different sized gifs for desktop pics. It’s worth reading the accompanying text in the post too because they are hilarious. An example:

Last but not least we have added a Web generation number (is it web 1.0? or Web 2.0, is it a corn or is it a nut?). I don’t want to spoil all of the little things in there, but please note that there are some websites that are web 1.5, some are 2.5 and some that are 0.5. This is not a mistake. Web 2.5 is what facebook is up to… Web 0.5 is what Jakob Nielsen is still doing.

Remember when MySpace was once cool? Most of that had to do with musicians taking it up and all that tasty tasty music on their sites.

MySpace rumoured to be flexing its News Corp leveraging muscles and maybe we will see a similar thing happening, this time with TV - but the danger remains that the audience will come just to watch the show and then leave the theatre.

More Space for MySpace: Murdoch puts a stake in the heart of broadcast TV (News Blaze)

It has quietly without fanfare, media flair, or bidding warfare, struck a deal with some Hollywood talent, expecting this little group to start new broadcasts of their first original series. Unlike traditional stations on air, this time jumping right to online shows. This once more guarantees MySpace the inalienable right to term itself once again, “A Pioneer among emerging markets”.

MySpace refuses to comment on having closed the deal.

Thomas Vander Wal has made a good point about a flaw of the ‘walled gardens’ like Facebook and MySpace - they break the communications loop.

Inline Messaging :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net

Many of the social web services (Facebook, Pownce, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) have messaging services so you can communication with your “friends”. Most of the services will only ping you on communication channels outside their website (e-mail, SMS/text messaging, feeds (RSS), etc.) and require the person to go back to the website to see the message, with the exception of Twitter which does this properly.

Here is where things are horribly broken. The closed services (except Twitter) will let you know you have a message on their service on your choice of communication channel (e-mail, SMS, or RSS), but not all offer all options. When a message arrives for you in the service the service pings you in the communication channel to let you know you have a message. But, rather than give you the message it points you back to the website to the message (Facebook does provide SMS chunked messages, but not e-mail). This means they are sending a message to a platform that works really well for messaging, just to let you know you have a message, but not deliver that message. This adds extra steps for the people using the service, rather than making a simple streamlined service that truly connects people.

According to Dave McClure anyway.

Master of 500 Hats: Kottke is wrong — Facebook isn’t AOL; it’s Visual Basic.

It’s really astonishing how much opportunity the big 3 GYM had to do something truly innovative, how many assets & properties & APIs they had to turn into great platforms, how many brilliant geeks & architects & programmers could have laid out a BIG VISION — and yet how PATHETICALLY & AWFULLY they missed the mark & overlooked the biggest potential for the IntarWeb since Clarke & Andreesen birthed Mosaic.

Have to admit that I’m unhealthily addicted to facebook at the moment (though it is raising some privacy related self realisations - will write more in the next post) and it’s like it’s hit some sort of critical mass in the past few weeks judging by how many of my friends in different countries have signed up completely independently.

The ease of the facebook app system for the end user is brilliant and why the experience is just so much catchier than when I registered for a mySpace and then just got totally bored in about two minutes.

But while those apps are confined to operating within facebook it will always be limited. It’s not an OS nor a browser and who would want it to be? Do I want to do my essay writing in facebook? No way.

It may well change but pure page space is another big contraint, I’ve already run out of room on my homepage (and if it’s not linked off that then it loses most of its point) for any more apps - if I add one another has to go (or should go anyway - it’s already looking like Paradise Lost).

Quite importantly, is also the addictive nature of facebook. I’ve been calling it Crackbook because it’s almost impossible at the moment to not check to see if there have been any updates. I’m checking it more than my email and that is scary. Like I switch off any sort of instant messaging when I’m trying to be productive - I’ll switch off facebook. I don’t need my crucial app running off it and creating all that temptation.

I think far more promising is Google Gears to developing apps on web.