Snow

Posted on Nov 30, 2010 | 0 comments

So, it’s been snowing. Here are some pictures

Social Media – Downfall of the ‘social’ web?

Posted on Nov 6, 2010 | 2 comments

Most people are on the social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, etc, and so these make up some of the ‘top’ social sites on the web today.

My question is, are these sites killing the ‘social web’? By this I mean, Forums, Blogs, etc. I say that Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc, are the downfall of these other sites because of the nature of the social networking services.

For instance, you tweet, you get replies, that’s the nature of twitter. However, if you tweet an interesting blog article, I have found that people reply to me, instead of actually commenting on the blog article. Sure, that’s traffic to those sites, which is awesome if all the site owner cares about is impressions for their Adsense, however if the site owner is genuinely looking for user interaction, feedback, then Twitter is robbing that from them, because instead of getting comments on their blog, they simply get @ replies on twitter.

The same is true for Facebook, Digg and Reddit, if you post a link, people simply comment on the social media site, instead of the site which is actually being linked, and because those interesting sites are getting traffic, but not any comments (or posts in the case of forums) real genuine people (not simply people who are interested in ad income alone) are starting less and less of them.

While the Social Media sites are immensely fun to browse, sort of a ‘link repository’ of all the interesting things in one place, I do think that they are also affecting the web in ways they never intended..

So, is Social Media the Downfall of the ‘social’ web?

Changing the URL Shortener to kwn.me on IP.Board

Posted on Nov 1, 2010 | 0 comments

By Default, IP.Board uses bit.ly as the default URL Shortener, now, this means when you make a status longer than 140 characters and select to tweet it, IP.Board adds a shortened URL linking to the full status to the end of the tweet. It uses Bit.ly by default to do this.

The same is true for the inbuilt “Share links” function in IP.Board, which lets you send a‘synopsis’ or title of the thread to a bunch of social networks, twitter and facebook included, by default this ALSO uses bit.ly.

Now, I may be biased, having been responsible for my own shortening service with a great group of friends who help me code it (and mostly do more than me, better than I ever could) every step of the way, and a great bunch of TweetDeck users who I also consider friends who use the service, we’re all extremely proud of our little site, so I wanted to, instead of using bit.ly on my IP.Board powered communities, to use my own service, kwn.me.

I figured that those of you who already use kwn.me with TweetDeck might also be interested in using it with your IP.Board installation, so here is how.

1. Download the kwn.me IPB API files here (thanks to Alan for helping with this part originally)
2. Unpack and Upload the “kwnme” folder into /admin/sources/classes/url/apis/
3. Edit /admin/sources/classes/twitter/connect.php
4. Find:

   $data      = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'bitly' );

   (line 218) and replace with

   $data      = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'kwnme' );

5. Edit /admin/sources/classes/facebook/connect.php
6. Find:

   $data      = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'bitly' );

   (line 439) and replace with

   $data      = $shorten->shorten( $url, 'kwnme' );

That’s it, it should work as normal, except using kwn.me as the default shortener, rather than bit.ly

Let me know in the comments if there are any problems

Budweiser – Designated Driver

Posted on Jul 8, 2010 | 0 comments

This ad is Awesome, nice to see that an alcohol company actually cares about it’s customers

Apple WWDC

Posted on Jun 7, 2010 | 0 comments

Now, as a non mac owner and owning nothing made by apple, this may seem like a weird blog post, but I was in the vbirc #chat channel and we have an apple bot which spits out the liveblog and so I was privy to some of the new things which Apple are doing, which I wouldn’t usually actively seek out, and I thought I would post my opinions on them, as a prospective first time apple buyer.

iAds

iAds don’t seem to be a very good or welcomed thing in the Apple community. Personally, if I had an iPod, and I installed an Application, such as Facebook, (example) and Apple served me ads, every 5 page refreshes, it’d get pretty annoying. Then of course, Facebook has inline ads also. It gets real messy real quick. Opinion: Dislike

Microsofts Bing comes to iPhone

Well, this is something I didn’t think I would see, Microsoft and Apple working together. Google will, of course, remain the favorite and the default SE for Apple devices, but it’s been said that Microsoft have been working hard to move Bing over to HTML5 so that it’s ‘Apple Approved’ for the iPhone, so good on them I say. Opinion: Like

iMovie

If I’m honest, this may flop, but it’s a nice idea, Usually you shoot a video and edit it on your iMac or Mac Pro (I dont have either, so I’d have to buy one) so the idea of being able to edit it right there on your iPhone is a nice one. It’s also a nice price at only $4.99. Opinion: Could work

iBooks

I do like this one, you download a Book, as a PDF, and it goes on your iBookshelf which is accessible via iPad, iPod and iPhone. This is the feature I like the best, the ability to data sync ability, maybe they could apply it to iPhone (maybe it’s already possible), so when you buy a new iPhone you can just sync your phone numbers across. It has many possibilities Opinion: Like.

Summary

Sounds like Apple are bringing alot more features to the table and alot of these are innovative as we have come to expect from Apple.

STEAM release new client.. I kinda like it.

Posted on Apr 27, 2010 | 0 comments

Full Image [lightbox]

So, Steam has released a new client, I kinda like it.. it’s clean, does the job, etc. I especially like the way the new games library is laid out, with all the games on the left side, and important links on the right, keeps everything clean and uncluttered, whilst adding some eye candy, with a backdrop of the game you’ve selected, so if you select Team Fortress 2, its gonna have a backdrop of Team Fortress 2 gameplay.

Although the new store layout leaves alot to be desired, it seems to be alot more secure than before, as now when you hit cart to buy something, you have to reauthenticate, whereas before, you didn’t have to, I also like how they have ditched the army green colours, it wasn’t very appealing or eyecatching at all.

The new community tab is also great, it no longer looks like IE embedded in an application like it did before, with the URL bar being stylishly integrated into the clients header. The Library has also some new options to display as a grid, or list too. [Gameslist] | [Gamespics] The Library’s ‘downloads’ tab is also new to me, it looks nice, tells you how much is being downloaded and uploaded by updates, or by games being installed, I thought that was nice and handy too.

Upsides; nice, new, clean etc. Downsides; store leaves a lot to be desired, takes a little longer to load