SOPA

This is a really good video about SOPA, but some facts are slightly missing.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

The US would seek extradition to prosecute breakers of SOPA abroad like they do with existing copyright laws.

The US currently controls domain name registration so would use that as a weapon against governments, people or organisations that didn't comply with their domestic SOPA laws.

And SOPA contains a section whereby anyone discussing or educating people about circumventing SOPA would fall under SOPA's restrictions. In the case of the video I have posted above that would mean VIMEO could be taken down and without due process or representation.

Colour Wheel For Use In Web Design

Color Scheme Designer is a great little JavaScript based web tool for creating a matching colour scheme for websites. It even includes a website preview that scarily seems to look great no-matter what colour scheme you choose.

Data Through Visible Light

When I heard about Data Through Visible Light, I thought it was something about fibre optics, but this is something different. This is an LED based light transmitting a data stream through alpha waves (light in the range of human vision). On the surface this might seem pointless, but it has a few tantalising applications.

Imagine an advert on television where by using a mobile phone camera you could download the product. Or if you are in a club the lights could tell you what music was playing. Or if a power LED on a product could stream detailed information about what it was doing. Imagine a situation where you have twenty or more televisions that you want to display the same image, in sync from the same video source, with current technology that would take a lot of cables, but with this the screens would only need to see the light from a single source.

The future of all electronics will be to make them wireless and this will be another tool. Wither it will be a staple of consumer electronics is yet to see, but all mobile phones have cameras.

The Importance Of A Good Website Name

Choosing the right website name is something that all first time webmasters struggle over, but it is a very easy thing to screwup. Take this list of 100 Website Naming Disasters for example.

The Onion's Take On Parenting And The Internet

The Onion is like a glimpse into an alternative reality. Sometimes they do disturbing pieces of satire, but this isn't one of those.

Everytime I see parents talking about the internet they are always afraid of it and say that they can't keep up with what theirs kids are doing because it is all hidden, but the Onion has a different take:


Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Google Chrome Auto Updates

Google Chrome is awesome, but in a seemingly controversial decision Google has chosen to auto update without the user's consent. There isn't even an option to turn updating off.

Rob Mensching has more on this and a very interesting selection of comments to his post.

I think Google has made a good decision in doing this, but as a power user I would like to know when this happens and what has changed when it does. The only reason why I am ok with this is because Google Chrome is a self contained platform and not a symbiotic piece of software like iTunes. Plus I recognise the security benefits and the benefits for Google in only having to support a single current version

360° Views of the LHC

Some 360 views of the LHC where taken while it was under construction and they Really Make You Feel Like You Are There.

Someone should make a game about a physicist in a Large Research Facility. That would be way better than all these street combat FPS games like Half Life 2.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is my new default browser. It is too awesome to try and convey with mere words. It is lightning quick, on EVERYTHING. Even my Yahoo Mail account which is always sluggish due to the heavy scripting. It is, the browser I have always wanted, right now. Goodbye IE, Goodbye Opera and Goodbye Firefox, you won't be missed.

The genius behind it all is that each webpage isn't just managed well or given it's own CPU thread, but instead managed by the browser like a process. And then for each page there are sub processes. So say a YouTube page will have the page as a process and then the flash object as another.

Chrome uses a relatively HUGE amount of memory to what we are used to from a browser. Right now with four windows open it is using 36MB of memory, but it is SO worth it.

Google have put together a Comic explaining their philosophy behind Chrome and some of the technical 'How We Did It' stuff. And please give it a try.

Google Chrome Download Page

GTAIV Websites

I have been playing a lot of GTA4 this week and I don't think I am going to complete it in under 30 hours (you get an achievement for that). But there are two awesome websites inside the game that I need to tell you about.

Goto an internet coffee and lookup:

www.bruiesexcutivelifestyleautos.com

www.whattheydonotwantyoutoknow.com

The second is a website detailing GTA4 secrets. This is a first, a website made by the game's developers detailing secrets about their own game, on a fake in-game internet. Which is funny because I always look at websites for cheats and secrets, but now I don't even have to leave the game to do that (yes I do know EVE Online has it's own built in web browser, but that is for the real internet, not a fake one).

FireFox 3 Beta 4

Despite FireFox having thousands of happy users, I have never been one of them. I am one of those people who will sometimes have more than ten webpages open at any one time and then leave them open on my computer overnight. This meant that FireFox's memory issues always blighted my attempts at using it as my primary browser. So it was with absolute delight that I discovered FireFox 3 (currently Beta 4 with Beta 5 coming soon) has solved all of that.

FireFox 3 Beta 4 is fast and responsive under all conditions. Websites like Google Maps, Digg and IGN that used to be super sluggish under IE and FF2, are now just as fast as any other website. I will even go as far as to say just as fast as a plain text blog.

So if you want to give the beta a go, you can Download A Copy Here. But be warned, I have found that it doesn't work with the new Yahoo Mail (I am using the classic view) and I have had the beta crash twice in the few days I have been using it for no apparent reason. This hasn't been a problem however because it remembers the pages that where open at the time of the crash, but despite all that FF3B4 is my current primary browser over IE7, FF2, Safari and Opera.

Video Games Meet Web 2.0

There is this great talk that was posted on GDC Radio Earlier (Direct MP3 Link) about what lessons the video games industry can learn from the internet.

During the talk Raph Koster (I Disagree With His Book) shows this awesome video that talks about what Web 2.0 is.



I think what is missing from Raph's talk is a message that the industry is heading in the right direction as it is, digital downloads will conquer retail (however long it takes), a combination of casual games as well as AAA titles are the way forwards for all studios and the days of incremental sequels are numbered in favour of titles that players want to own the whole series of and not just the latest incarnation.

Internet ON!

Ok back now, and I can tell you that I did not like my three week off-the-grid exsperiance at all. On onehand I rearlised the ammount of time I wasted checking my email and RSS (I will be removing some RSS feeds), but I wasn't exspecting to miss Wikipedia as much as I did. I even have a list of things that I want to read about.

And just for the record I have 226 unread messages in my inbox and my SPAM folder has the number 2069 next to it.

Hay Ho

Yes the mighty Orange has cut my Internet off. The bastards.

Currently sitting in Leicester Library using the Internet here as being on support from the government requires me to keep looking for a job to continue getting free money and the papers have had no job listings all week so my little job hunting diary has very little written since the last meeting I had with my Job Centre person.

Apparently I can signup to a new ISP on the 3rd next month, but even then I still have to get that all setup so I should be back blogging proper by the middle of next month.

New years resolution will be to make blog more interesting and more personally relevant to me and my musings as not having the Internet has made me realise how little time I spend free thinking on my normal routine.

And incase I don't get back to you by the end of the month, Happy New Year!

New Levels of Internet Evil

First there was discussion boards, then IRC, then personal websites, then Instant Messaging, then YouTube and other personal video sites, but now something even worse and yet more time consuming called Stickam has emerged. It is essentially Video Chat rooms made easy which I am sure will bring new time wasting opportunities to many people.

This kind of stuff I actively avoid. I don't use IRC because you are just talking to complete strangers and conversations are always guaranteed to be dumb. I don't Instant Message anymore because that just wasts hours talking about mundane stuff with main the problem being that most people will talk about stupid stuff just for the sake of talking because obviously if you are logged on and not talking to someone you know, you are upset over something and actively ignoring them .

The site is also good for voyeuristic tendencies so I am sure many people with personal pages and rooms will end-up having a group of stalkers that watch, but never interact and that is socially very bad.