You Try To Do A Nice Thing

Long-time readers will know that I’m involved with the nms project. This is a project which writes simple software that people can use on their web sites if they want guestbooks, forms that get emailed to them and all that very Web 1.0 stuff. It’s a nice thing that we’ve done. We’ve created something and… Continue reading You Try To Do A Nice Thing

Daily Mail on Google and Adele

Today, the Daily Mail published the most hysterical pile of anti-internet crap that I think I’ve ever seen. And that takes some doing as Daily Mail articles usually combine a complete lack of understanding of the internet together with the deep distrust and fear that Mail writers have for most of the modern world. In… Continue reading Daily Mail on Google and Adele

End of an Era

I’ve had a home internet connection for quite a long time. Originally I used Compuserve (I’m not too proud to admit it) but I’m pretty sure that I had switched to Demon before the beginning of 1995. At the time there weren’t really many other options to choose from if you wanted a real internet… Continue reading End of an Era

Internet Genealogy

In 1992 I started tracing my family history. The two main tools for amateur genealogists (at least until they get back to about 1840) are the indexes of registrations of births, deaths and marriages and the returns from the census which has been taken every ten years since 1841 (there are earlier censuses, but they… Continue reading Internet Genealogy

Pointless Battles For Geeks

Geeks invented the internet. And for many years it was inhabited solely by geeks and academics. Over those years a number of unwritten rules arose which controlled the way people used the internet. The unwritten rules were passed on to newcomers who saw the wisdom of the rules and continued to follow them. Everyone followed the rules and all… Continue reading Pointless Battles For Geeks

Using TinyURL

The BBC Backstage mailing list has briefly turned its attention from the iPlayer’s DRM and Ashley Highfield’s estimates of Linux usage and is actually having an interesting conversation about URL schemes. This was all set off by an email sent out to participants in the BBC archive trial. The mail used TinyURL to shorten a… Continue reading Using TinyURL

Selling Domains

I’ve been dabbling in web sites for some time now and over the years I’ve had my fair share of projects that either never got started or started well but eventually withered and died[1]. Most of these projects had an associated domain name. Previously, once I’ve decided that a project is moribund, I’ve just let… Continue reading Selling Domains

New Browsers

Last night I downloaded and installed two new browsers. Firstly I booted my laptop into Windows for the first time for months (it’s the only computer in the house that has Windows installed) and installed IE7. First reactions? A big “so what?” It’s (obviously) a vast improvement on IE6, but I can’t see anything that… Continue reading New Browsers

Firefox vs Internet Explorer

A nice rant by Kate Bevan in today’s Guardian technology supplement. She’s fed up of going into corporate clients’ offices and finding that Internet Explorer is the only browser available. Firefox has been available and stable for 18 months. Why do corporate IT departments still insist on forcing IE onto their users? So being dumped… Continue reading Firefox vs Internet Explorer