Tuesday 21 August 2007

Flashy things in flash

A friend sent me a link to the World Clock - fascinating stuff.

The World Clock is made by a company called Poodwaddle who offer a load of these flash gimmicks for free. I can't see anything that I'll be adding to any websites i look after but it really shows the potential of simple applications through flash.

I still haven't fallen in love with the use of flash on websites. The Poodwaddle applications i like but when I'm just wanting to access information then what's wrong with html? An example that's annoyed me recently was the revamp of the Honda F1 website [update: this website is now dead] with Flash. As an F1 fan I just want to see the pictures and read the race reports from the Honda's team perspective not have to have a new browser window open up, lose my toolbars and wait for loading, at least they've got the HTML option.

It's probably something to do with the fact that I'm one of the geeky minority who customise their computers, use FireFox, see websites on my terms, with my toolbars, love the user led revolution of the net, are amused by the supposed dumbing down caused by the web (see the article Is Internet Killing Our Culture?). Before i fly off on a completely different tangent I'll save that discussion for another day.

In the mean time, just think, in the time it's taken for me to make this post, 1 species is now extinct, 43 people have been injured in traffic accidents (surely that must be higher?) and nobody has contracted leprosy.

Related posts
A good use of flash (Nov 07)

Thursday 2 August 2007

Stop poking me, I'm bored of Facebook

Well i can't have a blog on Web 2.0 without mentioning Facebook. But who doesn't know anything about Facebook? Well my uncle actually, to whom i spent 5 minutes last weekend explaining what it is, I promptly gave up when i realised he didn't use the internet.

From my experience of it, Facebook seems to be the new mobile phone. If you don't have one you miss out. Depite that Facebook is losing it's appeal for me. Yes it's nice to be able to be in a network with friends, tag pictures and not since FriendsReunited first started have I been in touch with so many people i'd lost contact with but i can replicate all the uses of Facebook far better in other ways:
  • Tagging photos of friends - Get a flickr account. You can tag, you can have albums, you can organise, you can link to friends and best of all it keeps the full size image!
  • Messaging - Use email of course! The advantages being blatantly obvious, such as anyone can email you not just facebook members, you have an email address, and you can access it easier (for those people who have facebook banned at work). And anyway, Facebook emails you when you get a message, so just cut out the middle man!
  • Hearing from old friends - Keep in better contact with people by phoning them up or even... meeting up in real life with them. Most of the time if i've lost contact with someone, there's a bloody good reason.
  • Gifts - How about physical gifts? A real bunch of flowers.
  • Applications - Buy a Wii. Or Scrabble.
  • The Wall - a. Use email, cc everyone in, reply all. b. buy a cork board and some drawing pins.
  • Get spyed on by your boss - Regularly email him/her pictures of yourself in compromising situations. Give him/her access to your outlook calendar, and the cork board.
  • Poking - ...
Related posts
Everyone's bored of social networking (Jan 08)