Google Page Rank 4 achieved

Wow, I'd like to thank the interweb, the is alivites and a supreme being too. We've come a long way since the last state of the Benunion. I'm off to Hoxditch to celebrate. Hoot.

Streamlining web presence

Entering a sweltering hall at seventeen there’s no way I would have made a connection between a University/Careers Prospectus Fair and the current state of my web presence. As I walked through the hall, teaming with confused minds belonging to both students and sellers, physical and metaphorical arms tried to reach out to me. ‘Come and join the army, we’ll pay for everything, except your life. Sign up to Nottingham, our prospectus was designed by an artist.’

The same thing has happened to my online life. I must belong to a least a dozen social networks, forums, rss feeds, and mailing lists etc but to make any of them really worthwhile you can’t just take. Like the best relationships, communication, mutual interests and attraction are key. I’m not saying I want to make sweet love to my Facebook page or Tumblr account but investing some time will obviously result in positive results/searches/babies?


The problem is, there are too many. I talked about having it all in my iGoogle page and only stepping out of that to daringly press the StumbleUpon button but that’s not ‘giving’ enough from a community standpoint. Realistically, if you’re going to belong to things like Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Tumblr etc you really should contribute.

‘Time!’ I hear you cry in an impotent rage fuelled by modern living. Yeah, me too. So what are we to do? In the same way whacky middle class people, ‘downshift’ to the country or somewhere else they don’t need to keep up with the Jones,’ we too can digitally downshift.

This weekend maybe, I’m going to give some serious thought as to how many accounts I really need. In the same way you might analyse your monthly spend, or do a spring clean, I’m going to give some real thought to which communities, rss feeds and widgets I really need in my life, if I’m to have one at all. Praise be to the Google God.

Producers of content and I

Meeting the creator of something you enjoy is great. The first time it happened to me was during my raving days at Peach (at the Camden Palace). I have such a vivid(ish) memory of listening to Graham Gold, Pete Tong, Judge Jules or someone else with an equally stupid name, play choons over the radio that would feature later that Friday evening.


Amidst bodies, stewing in bass and luminescence, I could and often did, stumble up to the raised stage and talk to the DJs. Granted, the conversation usually went something like, “Hey, hey, Armin Van Buuren? Yeah, I’ve got your new choon, yeah. It’s a blinder mate. This set is banging.”

The important thing to note, is the ease of access between a producer of content and the consumer. Had I been a bit more coherent and the music a little less loud, there’s no doubt in my mind that Armin and I could have discussed what exactly made his ‘choons so banging.’

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the interweb is not too dissimilar from Peach, albeit with less sick on the floor. So far, I’ve written about/to: Paul Barnett, Oddworld Inhabitants, Rachel Newsome, Aleks Krotoski and more. So what? People send fan mail all the time. Yes, but the difference is these people got back to me within moments (digitally speaking). I’ve had the opportunity to discuss with the creator/producer personally. It’s like texting 666 and having Satan reply but less scary.

The interweb: allowing producer and consumer closer than ever and its open all the time, not just on Fridays. The entry price is the same though.

Botanicalls Twitter

I used to be a big fan of Cacti. I had a prickly forest’s worth when I was younger. The problem with Cacti; you assume that they don’t need much water and so lapse into forgetting to give them any at all. A dead cactus looks infinitely more depressing than say, some withered flowers. They sort of implode and whole chunks fall off, until it starts to resemble some zombie/cactus hybrid.


If you have a propensity for being absent minded, never fear. Not since the invention of the automatic sprinkler have plants had a reason to give a collect, err, flowering.


Behold:

"Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What's up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love"

Now you can talk to your plants and they’ll talk back, albeit only when they want something. A bit like real people then.

Stage6 to close down, Pirates take another blow

Arrr, me hearties, these be bad times indeed.

From Surfthechannel forums:

"...In many ways, though, the service did succeed, beyond even our own initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that it’s possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices and other products beyond the PC.


So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that."

One page interweb

As I understand it, prolonged surfing leads to a contracting of the muscles. This, as you can imagine, makes if very difficult to keep going time after time. There are ways to get around it, like taking up Yoga but frankly this analogy has run its course.

Web surfing, if people still use that expression, maybe it’s, speeding through the ether (net)? Anyway, I was having a conversation (a real one, with body language and everything) about the one page interweb. I mentioned before how watching news stories jump from widget to widget on my iGoogle page could send a person insane but through the madness, there came a sort of clarity, (not to be confused with ‘a moment of clarity’ ala alcoholics) a thought trail.


When first boot kicking my laptop to start, I used to execute a very Zen like and fluid movement (prepare for ultra geekness). Opening Firefox and then hitting command + T about five or six times, I needed only to type a few characters to see familiar web urls spring to life. Now I don’t bother. It’s not that I’ve suddenly become a technophobe or developed RSI I simply don’t need to.

All the pages I used to visit now have widgets for iGoogle. One page to rule them all, so to speak. My friends argued that Netvibes has a better interface…meh. Regardless, whatever into-your-face you favour, iGoogle has the cool changing panorama at the top of the page. In my more reflective moods I have the little fox who makes tea and goes fishing all in a quaint oriental backdrop, in my more ridicules moods I have the giant monster who works out and fights metal versions of himself whilst protecting an (oriental, I’m guessing) city. That’s genius.


Let the interweb come to you. Now I only venture out of my iGoogle high castle to hit the dreaded, sleep deprivating StumbleUpon button. I’m still working on the addiction. “Hello everyone, my name is Ben and I like to St-t-t-t-umble Upon.”

You feeling lucky, cyber/steam/bio/ punk?

With countless youth movements failing to bring down the establishment over the years, it follows that the establishment will remain a prominent force for the present and near future. Its proliferation might well lead us to…

Cyberpunk:

Wrought from the pages of William Gibson, Alfred Bester, Bruce Sterling etc Cyberpunk brings together all the rebellious anti-corporate/government sentiment inspired by the Punk movement of the 70s but places it in a post-industrial dystopia where mega corporations, corruption and a breakdown in the social order are prevalent.


If you’ve seen Blade Runner, the Matrix (because we don’t talk about the other two, in the same way we don’t mention the second Star Wars trilogy) A Scanner Darkly or Ghost in the Shell, then you’ll have a good understanding of a cyberpunk tone and setting. If you imagine Cyberpunk as the daddy, then these sub-genres are its bastard, steamy, gene-spliced, offspring:

Steampunk:

Often set in 19th century England or a world where steam power is still the main source of energy. They tend to be less obviously dark than cyberpunk, encapsulating more of the positive, arrogance of the Victorian era, well, among the Victorians at any rate.


The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, is a ‘what if’ Steampunk story. What if Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer and brought about the computer revolution a hundred years earlier? Suffice to say, Britain and the world become a very different place.

Biopunk:

Is usually set in the present or the future where genetics have advanced to extraordinary and scary new heights. Often propagated by a megalomaniacal visionary. A good example of Biopunk; Bioshock and Gattaca.


There are more sub-genres but these are too niche-core to bother mentioning. Niche, a nicer way of saying lonesome.