Posted 21:22, November 24th, 2009 in General, Interwebs

I’ve read 3 or 4 Google Wave reviews but none of them really prepared me for the wonder that is the Wave. The reviews I read were pretty short and sweet, explaining that Wave is an online collaboration tool (which, in all fairness, it is) and that was pretty much it.

At this point, most of them decided to go about explaining the layout of Wave and which box does what, none of them, however, actually sold Wave.

For a few weeks I’d pondered whether to bother asking Google for a beta invite or not and many a time filled in the required form, but never got round to submitting the request, mainly because I don’t know anyone else that has Wave access and thought it was pretty useless without knowing someone to collaborate with. How wrong.
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Posted 16:49, October 25th, 2009 in General, Interwebs

For around 15 years I’ve lived a double life, I’ve kept secrets from my “online friends” and “offline friends” alike, I’ve hidden who I am and that all came crashing down with the invention of Facebook.

I’ve been online since year 9 of high school which would have made me about 13. Back then I think 28.8k modems were all the rage and meant you were ‘super fast’ compared to the 14.4k versions. I remember my first time online with MSN, I had spent a minute connecting to find that there was absolutely no difference online to offline, atleast, that was my first thought.  Then I discovered Microsoft Comic Chat and it changed my world. I spent hours on MSNs IRCX chat servers talking to people from across the pond although I was a kid, I had no sense of maturity in “real life”, let alone online, and swiftly became banned from MSN for being a general pillock.  Who knew a SysOp could actually ban you from a chatroom!
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Posted 14:55, May 13th, 2009 in General, Interwebs

While I sit here on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, thinking of my next blog post it suddenly struck me that there is a fine art to documenting your presence online.  Anyone can successfully write an online diary but the whole idea of this blogging craze is for people to actually read what you write and hopefully come back continually as you plod on through life and indeed progress your cyber-presence from a diary to a blog.

What is the difference?  It’s simple really, a diary is just that, a log of your day to day life, maybe thoughts or adventures, either in note form or a more story-based form, maybe intended for a few close friends with the hope or acceptance that someone may stumble across it or simply for yourself to look back on from time to time.  A blog (web log), however, is written with the intention that people will willingly look for it or read it, with the hope that anyone who stumbles upon it, will come back again and again to read what wonderous issues you have to ponder today.  It should be written with the express intent to entice people into wanting to read more, for either good reasons or bad reasons, these of course both being valid reasons non the less and only does it become a valid blog once people actively engage in it.  There is no point having a blog with no visitors.
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