Techie Musings

Helpful Error Messages

I've been using Facebook quite a bit recently now that more people my own age are on it :|

Anyway, one of Facebook's main features in my opinion is its developer platform, which in turn means third party applications. Unfortunately my experience of interacting with third party apps has been pretty poor mostly due to the following error message:

This type of error doesn't give me a huge amount of confidence in the robustness and scalability of the infrastructure. Web 2.0 at its finest...

Trying to be cool and failing

I got an email a few weeks ago from someone at MySpace (someone who works there as opposed to a spotty teenager who uses it). Apparently I'd won some kind of gift and if I'd only provide a mailing address, it would be mine. Ah well, that's what office addresses are for - hopefully we have good bomb sniffing dogs in the mailroom.

So this thick envelope arrives containing a naff looking t-shirt and a completely over the top recruiting letter, which you can see for yourself below (name fuzzed to protect the guilty).

Now I'm not in the least bit cool or trendy, but I do know someone trying to be hip and failing dismally when I see it. Since we're dealing with MySpace, the recruiter is a "Talent Evangelists". w00t? They evangelise talent or maybe they find talent and evangelise to them? I don't know. Seems like a fake (I never met the person), transparent (misuse of information from the sign-up sheet) and pointless ploy (I'm so outside their demographic) to me.

Newsflash to MySpace: your audience gets marketing. They know when they're being used. Oh yes, and don't forget to "stay gold!"

Twitter is Inane

I don't get Twitter. I've tried it a couple of times but only the second time did I make a conscious effort to use it and that was at MIX this week.

Popular among leading bloggers, Twitter is a glorified status display viewable to other Twitter users. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not an A-list celebrity blogger, but I just find Twittering to be sad. I don't feel the compulsion or the self-involvement to tell people what I'm doing every minute of every day. I don't feel the need to know what others in my "circle" are doing all the time either. I figure that if it is important enough, I'll know about it.
Maybe this is a sign of middle age? I'm becoming a techno-social luddite at the age of 36. Bah! When I were a lad, we all worked down 't pit and if we were lucky, we got a lump of coal to eat.
Oh yes, and if I see another bloody urban kitten "fixin' da serverz" I will scream.
Enjoy the Twitter panel at the side of this page. It will go soon and good riddance to it!

Technorati Tags: twitter, web2.0

MIX07 is here!

This week I'm at MIX in Las Vegas.
MIX is Microsoft's conference for web developers, web designers and people with an interest in business on the web.
Should be a cool event for the many announcements that will undoubtedly be made, the great speakers and perhaps most important of all, the opportunity to chat with attendees who are at the cutting edge of web development and design.
Together with some other folks in the Microsoft US organisation, I'm doing some video casting and blogging from here. Others are doing podcasting. We'll try to find interesting people to talk to and get on tape for your viewing enjoyment!

Technorati Tags: microsoft, mix07

Countdown to MIX07

The second ever MIX conference is taking place in Las Vegas from April 30th to May 2nd. If you're a web designer, web developer or web businessperson, whether or not you're using Microsoft technologies, you'll want to attend.
To learn more about MIX, and to register, go to visitmix.com, and to help you count the days until MIX, you can download one of the Official MIX07 Countdown Gadgets for Live.com, Windows Live Spaces or Windows Vista Sidebar, or my very own Apple Dashboard Widget (see installation instructions below).

         

Dashboard widget installation instructions:

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you're using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you're using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, microsoft, MIX, web2.0, widget

Technorati Tags: microsoft, MIX, web2.0, widget

Web 2.0: Want Buzz? Shout About It

Check out www.buzzshout.com

College Recruiting and Social Networking

Ars Technica has an interesting piece on the web 2.0 social networking phenomenon hits college recruiting. Most interesting of all to me is the list of how today's students see the world:

• The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
• There has always been only one Germany.
• Text messaging is their email.
• Mr. Rogers, not Walter Cronkite, has always been the most trusted man in America.
• There has never been a "skyhook" in the NBA.
• Carbon copies are oddities found in their grandparents' attics.
• They grew up in mini-vans.
• Reality shows have always been on television.
• Affluent troubled teens in Southern California have always been the subjects of television series.
• Michael Moore has always been showing up uninvited.
• They never played the game of state license plates in the car.

Apart from showing that I'm getting old, it really illustrates how the environment with which we're familiar shapes how we see the world.

Technorati tags: web2.0, college, social+networking