dang
ovan
.com

Excellent 5-minute video basically explaining the current "Web-two-oh" state of the net. Apparently it was doing the rounds a couple of months ago, but it totally passed me by, so if you haven't seen it already you're in for a treat! It's both funny and educational; bargain!

Speaking of, I just bought dangovan.com. When I started out I used Mynciboi and then Mochaholic as pseudonyms as they were fairly unique phrases, easily trackable. But as I'm already top result for Dan Govan, totally by accident, as well as for mynciboi and mochaholic, I figured it might be time to ditch the hard-to-spell monikers. So it's new-site-time again, and this time I'm hoping to get well past the PhotoShop stage! The world is my oyster card.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Last.fm is bought by CBS. Maybe this will mean a better product, and well deserved propagation of a set of brilliant ideas, as well as just deserts for the founders, but I'm a little saddened by the idea of Last.fm joining the corporate word of bureaucratic bullshit.

From the LA Times:

"With Last.fm, users tell the website what music they are listening to. The site recommends other music they might like and links to buy the songs. For music it doesn't have licenses to play, it offers 30-second samples.

"Music sales aren't a big part of the financial picture so far, and they might not be even when CBS takes control. The minimal advertising on the site, however, will be beefed up. CBS envisions channels for music backed by corporate sponsors that will pay for the privilege every month.

"CBS also plans to put versions of its existing radio programming on the website."

Damn, this might really suck.

Here's an bitter-sweet and comedic hour-long presentation from SxSW entitled "how to bluff your way in web 2.0" by Andy Budd and Jeremy Keith.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Find out some of the compelling reasons here!

In other news I want something that takes my Messenger screen name (or "personal message" part) and records it when it changes. Preferably posting it to Twitter, facebook and here on my blog. Surly in this age of mash ups such a thing is possible? Maybe? No?

DO WANT!

My master plan of regular blogging was somewhat scuppered by an impromptu trip to the south of Spain, specifically to a hospital in Algeciras where my Grandfather José-Luis had the day before received his last rites. Thankfully he lived through the night and I got to see him the next day. In fact everything went just about as well as could be expected; he was back on his feet (with help) by the time I left to come back home to London. He's getting along fine now thank goodness. He's lost a lot of weight and his heart is pretty screwed; he'll never be the same again… But then at 83 years of age the family is grateful for what they get in that regard.

The inevitability of mortality might have been depressing, but juxtaposed with contemplation of the unimaginable span of years that octogenarians experience, as well as a whole very deep family vibe, I actually came away feeling quite encouraged, in a strange way.

"Hasta mañana, si Dios quiere."

I'm a big fan of looking forward to to the promise of future shininess. I loved Back to the Future 2, if only for the Holographic adverts, the self-drying clothes and of course who could forget the supremely improbable hover-board.

I get the same sort of enthusiastic anticipation in the web. It's all so very shiny and moves so fast! Except it doesn't really, not always. IE 7 took so bloody long to fix a slew of IE 6 problems, and it's still way behind where it should be. Bring on IE 8 please! And what about CSS3? I know it might be moot while IE is so far behind, but making CSS3 canon can only improve the case for it's inclusion in IE Next (as they like to call it). What's the hold up? CSS1 was proposed in '94 and made official in '96, CSS2 followed in '98, with CSS3 billed for release in '99. Eight years later and it's no closer.

From Andy Budd:

"We currently live in a world of live texture mapping and rag doll physics. And yet as web developers, we don't even have the ability to create rounded corner boxes programmatically. The W3C are so concerned with shaping the future, I'm worried that they may have forgotten the present."

*le sigh* It's a little alarming for a bright-eyed web-acolyte like myself. Eric Meyer's assurances that the CSS3 Advanced Layout Module will solve all layout problems and make the world a fluffier place to live in feel awfully far off.

The sense of foreboding doesn't end there though; what's going on with HTML 5? We've worked out that XHTML isn't all that, so for the moment that leaves us with HTML 4.01, which while nice still smells a little of forms and tables and the '90s in general. Where's the nav element? The video element? Header, footer, section, article, and all the (now) self-evident building blocks of web pages? They're in HTML 5 that's where. So don't worry, that will also be exciting and fluffy, and it's just around the corner! Except maybe not, Roger Johansson of 456 Berea St, having recently joined the W3C HTML Working Group, isn't optimistic. In fact he's more of the opinion that it's all fooked. *sigh*

On a slight tangent; web radio might be going down the pan also, due to he RIAA and other people being evil. Winner of the *cough* 2007 Web 2.0 award for music Pandora have been made to block any IP that don't come from the US. Though I much prefer last.fm, Pandora was cool while it lasted. They hope to get rights to distribute to UK and Canada soon so we'll see how it goes. I hate the idea that the apps and sites I use day-in day-out might not be here tomorrow, though I don't feel the same attatchment to div soup.

Hurrah, someone interesting posted about FOWD! Where someone interesting == panelist Simon Collison.

Hmm. I really need a linklog on this thing.

I had a couple of posts queued up but I'm bumping them off due to the importance of this public service announcement:

If you're older than 12 do not go see Spiderman 3.

It plays like a computer game with boss-fights every 15 minutes and pointless plot as mere padding. Wall-to-wall ham-acting and formulaic moralistic bollocks does not "dark" make. Nor does Tubby Maguire's wearing black, putting on eyeliner and finding a emo fringe from somewhere. The ensuing "sexy dance" might well be another sign of the apocalypse, but it's sure as hell not "dark". Jesus wept.

So the yahoo thing blew over, they ain't being acquired by anyone. Hurrah, the old world order lives another day. On the other hand it was raining out of a clear sky on Sunday so I'm not convinced that the end isn't at least slightly nigh.

This theory is vaguely supported by the fact that my company now has it's very own corporate blog at the catchily-titled participationmarketing.co.uk. My first reaction was that it's soulless and depressing as a concept, but now that it's been tarted up a bit I reckon it might be cool if they get enough writers writing on there. …And then it'll all get horribly out of hand in a digg-revolution stylee and everything will have to be shut down.

Oh and I made this map of teh internets my desktop at work last week. I've since seen links to it in a couple of blogs so I guess that means I can link it too. Gosee, it's funny. In fact go see XKCD full stop; funny, geeky, though-provoking, and cute; an excellent web comic with a very silly name.

From the FT website: Microsoft eyes takeover of Yahoo

I'm pretty sure this is a sign of the apocalypse. Dystopia here we come.

Wotcher! After months of being told how cool twitter is, I've caved and signed up. Picked "mochaholic" out of my slew of online pseudonyms. Woot! Maybe I'll even change the background or something. Inane comments guaranteed! For about a week or so at least, beyond that we'll see. I guess it'll depend on how many contacts I get so add me add me add me! (Or something.)

In other bandwagony-type news I've also signed got a Facebook account, purely because everyone EVER seems to be on there. Not usually a compelling reason for me to do anything, but I can be a unique snowflake elsewhere. (Like here for example.) In the mean time I need to be plugged in baby!

Next on my list of possibly-pointless webapps is Remember the Milk, an online to-do list thing, which is great, but totally uninteresting. I need lists to keep track of stuff, and huge piles of fake events in google calendar just wasn't cutting it anymore.

Oh yeah! And Skype too. UN == "daniel.govan". Think I'm done for now. Poke me on one or all of these, you know you want to. Maybe to tell me what other rawkin apps I need in my life ;-)