brionglóidí

Lessons learned from an internet cafe

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:51:00 +0000

I often get asked by people to explain what makes me different from all the other web designers out there.
I tell them my first business was an internet cafe.

Ok, not the type of answer they were expecting, so I elaborate.

Firstly, I tell them that running and managing a service-based business, often working long hours on the front lines in a sales and customer care capacity, has enabled me to better understand the day to day concerns and needs of the small/medium-sized business owner in a way my competitors never can. This experience, added with my years of experience as a designer, both as an entrepreneur and also in the corporate environment as an employee, has broadened my perspective enormously.

But that's not the best part. See what makes me different is not simply that I used to run a brick and mortar business, but the nature of the business itself. Back when I set up DSL wasn't always available and wireless and mobile internet were still embryonic and so, to fill the increasing demand for internet access, cafes like mine were popping up like mushrooms all over the world. I had gotten into the game quite early which was why my internet cafe swiftly became the primary communications hub for an entire town. It kept me quite busy. And it was also a laboratory of sorts where I could freely study the habits, patterns and preferences of a wide range of customer demographics. Invaluable information as I began to expand online into the field of web design, consultancy and internet marketing.

Since starting that business I've seen more websites than most mortals and helped hundreds of customers navigate them correctly, even when, for example, the website in question was in Arabic, Cyrillic or Chinese. When it comes to knowing the difference between good and bad site navigation, I'm your man.

Owning and operating an internet cafe is an interesting experience to say the least. You'll meet all sorts of people, from all walks of life and of every nationality, culture and creed. You'll meet some colourful characters, some very perplexing and/or unsettling ones and a fair few poker-heads, FPS game junkies, fanboys and sundry obsessives. Some customers you remember, others fade with time but the ones you'll never forget are the ones who rampage through the cyberverse like a rhinoceros through a minefield. They don't know what they're doing, they don't have the patience to learn and get snotty when you try to explain what they're doing wrong. Their tactic, therefore, is to click on things frantically until they find what they want. And because they never do, they spend all their time sighing, clicking, hissing and cursing under their breaths.

For example there's Angry-Hates-The-Internet-Guy, who wants instant information and/or gratification and to whom every button, field and mouse click is an enormously irritating ordeal. He tends to huff and puff a lot, makes unmercifully loud noises when typing and regularly bangs the mouse on the table with frustration. Using the internet literally makes this guy sweat.

Or Terrified Granny, who's 84 years old and doesn't quite understand what the Internet actually is, other than it's something to do with computers which, itself, is some vague, abstract concept to her. To date the sum of TG's knowledge about the Internet and computers has been gleamed from tabloid newspapers, so, preparing to take her first step online to book an airline ticket, she's expecting all manner of viruses and perverts to start lunging out at her from the ether. She's also terrified of pressing any buttons whatsoever and regards the whole process as something like trying to defuse a ticking bomb. Her eyesight is also terrible, which is why she can't see the links but always notices those obnoxious Yahoo banner ads and clicks those instead. Ten minutes and 40 Internet Explorer popups later she gives up until finally, ten visits and ten abortive attempts later, she comes in with a younger relative who eventually helps her purchase the ticket.

These are just two prime examples. Over the years I've catalogued plenty of these classic internet cafe archetypes and found them invaluble from a design perspective. When creating a site I try to look at the big picture, the navigation, the site operation, search functionality, headers, text, colour scheme, density of information and so forth, not just from the accessability standpoint, but through the eyes of Terrified Granny.

Other days I like to pretend I'm Angry-Hates-The-Internet-Guy, and so I run through each site trying to find specific information and, in so doing, locate those weakpoints that might make AHTI Guy blow his top. Then I eliminate those by simplifying the site's design and structure.

So with this process in mind I’ve decided to start a series on website design and development no-nos. The sort of mistakes that can cost your website traffic and your business money, that will cause AHTI Guy to bust a blood vessel and turn Terrified Granny into a gibbering wreck balled up on the floor.

Some of these are obvious omissions still to be found on an alarming amount of websites, others are additions such as a Flash intro page or some other cheesy gimmick which some guilty party decided to add because he/she/they thought it made their website look really important. Then there the baffling design decisions; the bewildering buttons and Escher-esque navigation, the illegible fonts and the horrendous colour schemes. Last but not least are content issues such as having reams of incomprehensible text, obvious spelling and grammar errors, indecipherable translations, unclear instructions or, in some cases, no useful information whatsoever.

In fact I think everybody has at least one, possibly 50, things about websites that make them want to throw their computer through the nearest window. I’m going to list some of mine in this series, starting with issues related to search and navigation or, more to the point, a lack thereof. After that it’s time for stupid and annoying design and finally web development disasters.

I’ve already started compiling the lists and will be publishing them shortly. In the meantime please, by all means, feel free to list your own particular bugbears here in the comments section. I’ll be happy to put together a compilation of some of the best user suggestions which don’t already get mentioned in the upcoming articles.

Anyone remember when ads just sat there blinking at you?

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 07:57:00 +0000

It's not the first time I've mentioned this, I've mentioned it before, and no doubt I'll mention it again. And as you can probably guess I'm going to mention it now. It's the one thing which really, REALLY gets on my nerves, the one and only thing I would happily ban from the internet completely under pain of death. I'm talking, of course, about ads that won't shut the fuck up.

Back in 2007, when those loud screaming smilies were driving me insane, I had thought this was as bad as web advertising could possibly get. Oh boy was I wrong.

For one thing, incredibly loud, obnoxious and infuriating though they were, you could contain them. They only made noise when you moused over them. If they were placed in side banners then you could easily avoid them. The problem was that they were often placed sneakily in the body of textual content like mines in a harbour which meant that you had to steer your cursor carefully around them.

Still, whenever those ads shrieked at me I knew, deep down, that it was really my own fault. No point blaming an ad that's specifically designed to only make a noise when a mouseover is detected. No mouseover, no noise.

That covenant between browser and advertiser lasted for a good few years. Since then I've seen countless ads based on the same mouseover principle, some, like the smilies, that drove me crazy and others which, I have to admit, were very, very clever. Examples of these were ads that learned to take advantage of Flash's then-newfound (this is 2007 I'm talking about remember) video capabilities to create interactive video ads where users could affect the outcome of the real video output depending on where they clicked. What I liked about them was the fact that they were more than mere ads but rather cleverly implemented multimedia applications that built upon the web's strong tradition of interactivity. Plus, instead of garish old skool gifs inducing mass seizures with their incessant strobing and flickering, these ads sat perfectly still and quiet in the corner unless moused over. And by that time these 3rd generation banner ads had become so common that accidental mouseovers were rare.

By the end of 2009 and into 2010, however, something started to happen. All through the summer of 2009 and into the Autumn (that's Fall for you Yanks) internet advertising seemed mainly consist of a phenomenon known as Evony Boobs.

At the time there was a lot of buzz around these ads and their slow descent from medieval fantasy artwork to soft porn which caused no shortage of controversy.
The cheek of them! What cynicism! To think that mature, intelligent video gaming geeks would be seduced into playing a crappy (and, as it transpires not even remotely sexy) online Civ clone just because of a banner-adful of boobs! Two years on I need not tell you that the boobs won.

An Evony cleavage queen - and this is one of the tame ones

The Evony boobs campaigns set a precedent for all other online games, in particular the never-ending deluge of Warcraft clones, to try to be bigger, louder and brasher than their competitors in order to get more signups. After that it was only a matter of time before the Treaty of Mouseover was broken. (Xmas 2009 by my book)

From there on in the web just got louder and louder and louder. Full sound and video ads for online games would be triggered automatically blaring out Final Fantasy action cutscene-style music at maximum volume. So loud, in fact, that even though I usually set my speakers or headset to a reasonably low level, the sound is still deafening.

And that was it, the floodgates were open. From there on in it was considered fair game, even for large companies, to disseminate their loud, obnoxious video ads throughout the web. Ads deliberately designed to play automatically even before the page has fully loaded. Which, as you can imagine, is a nightmare if, like me, you're in the habit of right-click new-tabbing dozens of links in one go until you find the thing you're looking for.

I'd been so busy evangelizing about how great internet-enabled TV will be that I'd forgotten it's a double-edged sword. That whilst the web will change the way we view TV forever that there might be some serious blowback and that some of the more nauseating aspects of TV would also begin to materialise on the internet.

If you look at it from that perspective you can see evidence of this already. Certainly the Evony ads are a watershed moment with one blogger cleverly comparing them to something out of the movie Idiocracy. Indeed the Evony ads are perhaps the most blatant example of the TV network executive mentality ever seen on the web, no imagination, no innovation just slavishly dredging the very squalid depths of stupidity and vulgarity in a bid to be always lower than the lowest common denominator. Indeed you can just picture some thick-headed executive sociopath slavering over the Evony campaign results before storming into his timid, terrified graphic design team bellowing "more boobs!"

At least the Evony ads were silent, this new autoplaying breed, which started with Warcraft clones, has now spread to the mainstream. At the time of writing I'm currently working Sausage-side. The sort of ads favoured here are generally the type of bile-building nastiness which we were grinding our teeth to ten or fifteen, or in some cases 20, years ago.

German TV doesn't have commercial breaks so much as sporadic temporal interference from a parallel universe. A robotic, dystopian Daz doorstep challenge universe where the Wethers Original granddad is still knoodling with his grandson, all men are fat guys in blue overalls who spend their weekends sawing timber and young women achieve orgasm from eating yogurt. Eventually Overalls-man and Muller-women get married and have a bunch of blonde, bowl-cutted Nutella children that hatch out of Kinder eggs. Mother then lives out her entire miserable life making instant meals and cakes for her goofy-looking family who all start pulling strange faces and going "mmm" as the camera pans around the dinner table. It's that same brand of weary, bug-eyed Betty Crocker crap that Americans were already wincing at back in the 1950s. But in Germany it's cutting edge. I give it 38 years at least before they get to the whole, man decides to make dinner whilst women laugh at him but it turns out to be great because he used some stuff out of a jar, type ads. Right now, however, the idea that a man might swap his blue overalls for an apron is too radical and subversive for German television.

So what's my point? Well my point is it never bothered me before because German TV is so utterly atrocious I never watch it thus their painfully retro commercials remained sealed in the idiot box dungeon dimensions where they belong. And all was well, until a couple of months ago, when they suddenly broke free.

Now whenever I go online I run the risk of getting accosted by large German chemical corporations and culinary war criminals like Doctor Oetker trying to loudly convince me to buy their "fresh and tasty!" soup with a pitch that was already lame back in 1983, often five at a time, depending on how many tabs I open.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you say, then why don't you use something like Adblock Plus and run NoScript for good measure. Well I can (and often do) do that, but doing so still doesn't mean I'm safe from the tyranny of loud ads.

Take YouTube. Used to be a time when you went to YouTube and the worst you'd see was a silly little semi-transparent overlay with a regular AdSense unit on it. Click on the X and it's gone - simple. Now, rather unimaginatively for Google, they've just copied the forced ads concept from other websites. In their latest lame attempt to try wring some sort of proper revenue from the site Google have enabled a new pre-roll ad feature. This means that it's now not uncommon to click on a YouTube video and get deafened by a full video ad which you have to sit through before finally getting to see the video you want to watch. It's particularly annoying when you're trying to watch a video sequence with the volume set to regular and then some BIG LOUD AD FOR AMERICAN BULLSHIT comes on. Wow, that's great, YouTube, thanks for the tinnitus.

YouTube is also inadvertently responsible, as the most popular video hosting site, for the evil that is autoplay. You know, you're looking for some information or company details and suddenly you get this BIG LOUD VIDEO AUTOMATICALLY PLAYED AT YOU. This is the sort of tactic MLM "Gurus" and other "how I got rich quick doing nothing" types love to employ, usually in conjunction with a "Are you SURE you want to leave this page?" type popup when you try to exit, ideally set to make it next to impossible for the average user to do so, for maximum irritation.

Proper business websites should not resort to these sort of cheap tactics, it's basically like having a great big neon sign over your door saying, "Hey! Look at me I'm a complete scumbag!"

Thing is a lot of traditional marketing types see that and think it's great because it creates IMPACT!! (They love that word.) How do they do that? Can you do that? I want that on my website... oh here we go again with the pushy sales website gimmicks...

Never, ever try and ram things down people's throat on the internet. Always give your site visitors a choice and never forget your company website is just one click from oblivion, one tab in ten, where the other nine are your competitors.

When a visitor comes to your site they want to be able to find the information that they want to find not what you want them to find. Ambushing them with a sales pitch video that automatically plays on your landing page might seem like a great idea but it isn't. It only appears that way to those from a traditional marketing background who have as yet failed to realise that the web is not a broadcast medium.

Radio and TV are broadcast mediums. They're unidirectionally broadcast and therefore also passive mediums. The web, on the other hand, is an active, multidirectional medium. You click, you search you navigate until you get to the content you want. Anything that impedes this process will invariably end up backfiring disastrously.

There are rules for advertising on the web, just as there are rules for radio and television. Imagine how crazy people would go if they weren't able to flip channels during ad breaks or if the number one song came on the radio and then halfway through an ad for floor polish starting playing right over the chorus.

And yet I see these rules being broken time and time again; people trying to plaster website after website with loud, shrieking digital graffiti because they still don't get it. The whole point of internet marketing is that it is the opposite of broadcast marketing. You don't have a captive and passive audience, in fact you won't have an audience at all if you persist in screaming slogans at passers by instead of trying to connect with people. Nor will you ever be taken seriously unless you are seen to actively participate online.

Then again, as the Evony vamps have so amply illustrated, if all you want to do is make a fast buck and don't care how tacky you look then really big boobs and an even bigger budget will probably do the trick. That's, of course, providing you have the wealth and resources to completely carpet-bomb the worldwide web with your adverts. And, since everyone and their uncle are all hell-bent on doing the exact same thing, your saturation bombing campaign could wind up costing a hell of a lot more than you had initially estimated.

Yes, it's dark days indeed for the web. The advertising genie is finally out of the bottle, the gloves are off and my metaphors are running thin, thinner than my patience. It's enough to make me yearn for screaming smilies and the fart button, the good ole days when the internet was a wild frontier of Active X exploits, trojans, spyware and filth and the worst thing lurking at the end of a hyperlink would be a Russian-made Stormworm variant instead of smaltzy ads for insurance companies or pink-liveried shocktroopers accosting shoppers with Vanish stain remover.

Seriously, can't we just go back to purple flashing "buy now" gifs, hitcounters, Comic Sans and dancing babies?

Oh and these things - seriously how cool were they?

Two new websites

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 07:16:00 +0000

Two new Irish websites have been launched by Brionglóid Media

The first is The Pantaloons a pantomime company based in Ennis, Co. Clare.

The Pantaloons have been performing the annual Ennis panto for ten years and have just recently performed their 10th Anniversary panto, Aladdin.

The Pantalooons are always looking for people to join in so if you are interesting in performing on stage or helping behind the scenes contact the Pantaloons for more information.

West Limerick View is a new West Limerick portal website which launched this week. The aim of the website is to serve as a one-stop source for all information on the West Limerick region including Business in West Limerick, Events in West Limerick, Bars and Restaurants in West Limerick, West Limerick Hotels, West Limerick Tourism and West Limerick News.

So, for example if you are looking to find events in Abbeyfeale or hotels in Newcastlewest West Limerick View has all the information you need.

Businesses can advertise with West Limerick View for as little as €1 a day, contact West Limerick View for more details.

Nintendo to release 3D version of handheld DS console

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:20:00 +0000

As regular readers of this blog no doubt already know, I'm a huge Nintendo fan.

Yes, when it comes to the Big N I'm just a big kid. I still have my original NES in not-so-mint condition and will freely admit to have sacrificed a large portion of my life to the Legend of Zelda series, from the first golden cartridge all the way up to the Twilight Princess on the Wii. So the first great news for me is that there's a new installment on the way.

The really BIG news from the Big N, however, is the upcoming release of the 3DS, a three dimensional version of their excellent DS handheld which apparently manages to create a stunningly realistic 3D effect without the need for goofy glasses.

View the video of people's reactions to it here. Maybe the effect can't be captured on 2D camera, then again maybe it's just clever marketing, but somehow not being able to see the effect and only being able to hear people talking about it only makes me want to see one in action more.

The Social Network

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:11:00 +0000

Next month two movies which I've been really looking forward to will finally be released. The first is Oliver Stone's sequel to the 80s classic, Wall Street. The movie, set at the beginning of the current financial crisis, sees the return of the most dynamic wheeler-dealer in cinematic history, Gordon Gecko, played once-again by Michael Douglas.

The second movie, however, I thought was a dumb idea for a movie when I first heard about it; a movie based on Facebook founder Mark "I'm CEO bitch!" Zuckerberg. I was told it was going to be thriller and couldn't help wondering how thrilling it could possibly be? And all I could think of was that the movie was clearly a shameless cash-in.

Then I heard who was going to direct it.

David Fincher is a former music video director who moved into the world of movies with Alien 3. Though, by his own admission, the movie is a failure (Fox micromanaged the whole project to death long before Fincher had even signed on) it's still a damn sight better than its successors and helped him land his second movie, Se7en. Like Alien 3, Se7en immersed its audience in a dark, murky, sepia-toned nightmare. His most popular movie to date, Fight Club, retained many of those trademarks; the hazy, yellowy industrial grunge and acid-burn exposures that characterised the Fight Club world. Then, in sharp contrast with that, was the Corporate World; searing Xerox scan lights and blinding fluorescents, bland white cubicles filled with bland white people, styrofoam coffee cups and Ikea-styled iconography. The movie would have been a pretty cool movie based on its storyline alone, but in the hands of Fincher, it became one of the masterpiece movies of the 90s and a true piece of visual art.

So what's he going to do with Facebook? Well, Facebook the website, of course, has its very own distinctive look and feel; clinical white shiny surfaces offset by lines of neon blue. (The blue, apparently, because Zuckerberg's colourblind and blue's the colour he sees clearest.)

The idea that got me excited about the movie was when I put Fincher and Facebook together in my mind I envisioned something akin to the Fight Club Ikea sequence with Facebook buttons and widgets. From the look of the trailer and promotional videos, it looks like this is precisely what Fincher has done.

Fight Club's relentless pace and the raw and edgy editing style, cutting back and forth between the jaded, insomniac Corporate World and the visceral, blood and testosterone world of Fight Club, may never have worked, however, without the erratic sonic sculptures of the Dust Brothers who provided one of my favourite soundtracks to any movie and the perfect aural accompaniment to Fight Club.

For The Social Network Fincher is reunited with one of his former music video clients, none other than Trent Reznor a.k.a. Nine Inch Nails as well as NIN collaborator and producer Atticus Ross. Ross has recently worked on yet another excellent soundtrack, to the post-apocalyptic badass-evangelist movie The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington.

I signed up to the NIN newsletter some time back and so was recently informed of a free downloadable "Sampler" containing a few tracks from the upcoming soundtrack.

If the music from the sampler is anything to go by this movie, much like other Fincher movies, is going to be pretty dark. It sounds very much like the aforementioned Book of Eli soundtrack, as well as other NIN works like those from the Ghosts series or some of the instrumental pieces from The Fragile.

Among the central themes of Reznor's entire body of work is that of "technology in decay" and that of loosing one's humanity to "the machine." Themes which are in stark contrast to experimental abstraction of British electronica or the shining futurists of Detroit techno. For that reason I can think Reznor is the ideal candidate to follow in the Dust Brothers' footsteps.

Together, I'm certain, Fincher, Reznor and Ross are going to detonate a sensory depth charge deep inside our minds. Whether or not the story is up to scratch I cannot say, though the trailers certainly make it look compelling.

I understand it to be a paranoid techno-thriller about treachery and corporate greed. The story of how one, cocky, scrawny little geek became the world's youngest billionaire by stabbing his friends in the back and exposing all our private lives to global scrutiny. That's about the gist of it as far as I can tell, well it's certainly not going to be a "horray for Zuckerberg" plot. That message is conveyed immediately on watching the trailer, where a choir of children sing a cover version of Radiohead's "Creep" over a montage of Facebook profile activity.

In fact, one gets the distinct impression that even with the despicable corporate marauder Gordon Gecko coming out of retirement, Oliver Stone's iconic character won't receive a fraction of the ire Zuckerberg will when both movies hit the screens.

As to whether this movie is going to be better than Fight Club? No I don't think so. I don't imagine The Social Network being better than Fight Club any more than I can imagine "Zuck" beating up Tyler Durden. Still can't wait to watch it though.

Happy Birthday Super Mario!

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:20:00 +0000

It's the 25th Anniversary of Super Mario Brothers, the biggest-selling and most popular game franchise of all time. Hard to believe it all began 25 years ago. Though Mario had already appeared in Mario Brothers (without the Super prefix) and the Donkey Kong games, it wasn't until 1985 that the Super Mario franchise kicked off in earnest with its now world-famous character, innovative gameplay and one of the most catchy theme tunes of all time.

Created by Shigeru Miyamoto, the creative megabrain behind many of Nintendo's most successful games franchises including the Legend of Zelda, Kirby and Metroid series, Super Mario Brothers went on to become the then biggest selling game of all time.

By bundling the game with the NES, Super Mario also helped shift enormous amounts of the console in the US and Europe, whilst other companies, most noteably Atari, were still reeling from the video game crash. There then followed a string of sequels and spin-offs such as Super Mario Brothers 3 for the NES, widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time.

Thoughout the late 80s and early 90s Nintendo would face tough competition from Sega. Throughout these "console wars" Mario remained Nintendo's greatest asset. Although Sega had a number of classic arcade games to their credit they could never come up with a Mario-beater, but that didn't stop them trying. Wonder Boy, Alex Kidd and the Mickey Mouse series (and many more I've now since forgotten) all tried to emulate Super Mario's success, but Sega had to wait until the 1991 release of Sonic the Hedgehog before they found a truely worthy contender to Mario's crown.

Sonic, with its crisp graphics and blisteringly fast, highly-addictive gameplay, finally allowed Sega to outsell Nintendo consoles, something which it had not been able to do since the release of Super Mario Brothers in 1985. Predictably enough Nintendo retalliated with its number one weapon, bringing Mario back in the excellent Super Mario World, a title which helped do for the 16 bit Super Nintendo, or SNES, what it had done for the NES in '85.

As the years went by new Nintendo consoles arrived on the scene and more Mario games were released from Super Mario 64, the first 3D Mario adventure on the N64, right up to the whirling, spinning phosphorescent insanity of the Super Mario Galaxy games for the Wii.

But it is still the original, with its catchy little 8 bit tune, cute, colourful but ultimately primitive graphics and simplistic but addictive gameplay, which still manages to weave that timeless sense of magic and childish innocence for which Super Mario is famous.

Even after a quarter century, in an age of high powered game PCs and consoles, Super Mario Brothers continues to delight young and old alike. It is now available to play online or in emulator form so now Dad's who grew up playing the game as kids get to pass on to their children those indespensible life's lessons such as the location of Warp Zones, the infinite life cheat on the turtle pyramid at the end of World 3-1 and, most important of all, to always remember that some days you stomp the turtles and some days the turtles stomp you.

And, yeah, for those who think I'm being a sentimental old fart give it a go. Like I said you can play the original Super Mario Brothers online, identical to the NES original, just be prepared not to get any work done for at least the next couple of weeks.

Warp Zones - you never do forget their locations.

The Ten Best Simpsons Internet Jokes

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:09:00 +0000

1989 the number, another summer
Sound of the funky drummer.

Fight the Power by Public Enemy the revolutionary soundtrack to a year which saw the beginning of the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the fall of the Berlin Wall. A year that would come define my generation, for three reasons in particular.

First, in came the UK the Second Summer of love, the birth of Acid House, raves and the popularisation of electronic dance music and DJ culture.

Meanwhile in Switzerland Tim Berners Lee was laying the foundations of the Internet as we now know it with the invention of the hypertext language HTML, the nuts and bolts of the Worldwide Web.

And in the United States, a then little-league broadcaster called Fox was about to take a chance on making what was then a few minutes of filler on The Tracy Ullman Show ("the nation's showcase for psychiatrist jokes and musical comedy numbers", according to Troy McClure) into a full half hour animated sitcom.

The first ever episode, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, was broadcast in December 1989 and, much like dance music and the Web, the Simpsons would soon become a cultural phenomenon. Not only would the Simpsons become the longest-running sitcom ever but it would also be widely regarded as the coolest and most influential TV show of all time.

How influential? So influential that prominent political figures like First Lady Obama, Tony Blair (then Prime Minister) and Al Gore (commenting on how winning the Nobel Prize made up for having his Presidency stolen) have all appeared.

The show has the world record for guest star appearances. The list is diverse with actors as such as Ian MacKellan, Kirk Douglas and Dustin Hoffman, musicians including Johnny Cash, U2, Michael Jackson and three of the Beatles. Athletes such as Ronaldo and Pele also appeared, as did astronaut Buzz Aldrin, reknowned scientist Stephen Hawking, entrepreneur Richard Branson and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

Indeed Murdoch is more than happy not just to appear on the show but to let the Simpsons ridicule him, his company and his politics because he knows all too well that it was the Simpsons that saved both Fox and Sky from the abyss back in the early 90s.

Over a decade since it was first aired the Simpsons are still as relevant and timely as ever. They continue to draw attention to, and poke fun at, the big issues of our times and not only are they still at the cutting edge of culture, they've been consistently on the cutting edge of technology too.

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while but haven’t had the time. Now that Season 22 is set to air in a couple of weeks, with a guest star list that includes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, we can pretend that this post is actually timed to coincide with that.

Also, I haven’t looked, but I’m going to assume that people have written about this before, this is the interweb after all, but what the hell, I’m going to do it again. After all it is, as I said, the combination of the two things that have come to shape and define my generation – the Internet and the Simpsons.

So without any further ado I give you the my Top Ten Simpsons Internet gags.

10: He’s gonna shoot those Google Earth folks whut caught me with my britches down.
Rednecks and Broomsticks - Season 21, 2009

I’m putting this in at number 10, it’s a very recent one and I couldn’t stop laughing for days over it. The quote is by Cletus (the Slackjawed Yokal) talking to Homer as one of his many sons walks out the room carrying a bazooka.

This one is a perfect example of how current the Simpsons can be, coming hot on the heels of the ongoing Google Street View controversy.

Also in the same episode Lisa becomes interested in Wicca and Ned Flanders catches her looking up a site called “Wiccapedia”.

9: All those strangers Googling each other, makes my skin crawl.
Bart Has Two Mommies - Season 17, 2006

Having won a FeMac computer, the so-called computer for women (one of many jibes at Apple) Ned Flanders offers to give the computer to Marge for free, because he can’t stand the idea of people “Googling” each other.

I don’t know, but somehow Ned Flanders manages to make performing a simple web search sound like the very depths of depravity.

8: The Internet, is that thing still around?
30 Minutes Over Tokyo - Season 10, 1999

When a new Internet café opens in Springfield Lisa tries to convince Homer to go. She offers to show him how to order pizza on the Internet, the above quote is Homer’s sullen reply.

(Homer isn't on best terms with the Internet at this stage, no doubt still sour after his failed online business and other Internet-related mishaps which we’ll get to later)

Bart tells Homer he knows a website that shows monkeys doing it to which Lisa replies, "the Internet is more than a global pornography network it’s a…"
But she's cut off by Homer who's already in the car beeping the horn, “Come on Lisa! Monkeys!”

As mentioned before, The Simpsons writers never miss an opportunity to take the piss out of Rupert Murdoch. During the course of his surfing Homer tells Lisa that he's bought stock in something called Newscorp, "Dad that's Fox!"
"Argh! Undo! Undo!"

In keeping with the Simpsons tradition of giving businesses amusing names, the cafe in Springfield was called “The Java Server”. Though compared with some of the names I've seen on real internet cafés, isn't anywhere near as cheesy.

Back in 1999 Internet cafés were still a worldwide phenomenon and it seemed like every town had one. I myself was involved in the Internet café business back in the day as was a friend of mine, who ran a place called Edgecom, the name itself taken from an episode I'll be getting to shortly...

7: They went belly up like all the other internet companies.
I Am Furious Yellow - Season 13, 2002

Ah the good old days before YouTube and social networks, when viral Internet memes were propigated via IRC and geeky web forums and Flash cartoons were slow and crappy and with a few exceptions, like the cutsey/violent Happy Tree Friends (itself like an R-rated Itchy & Scratchy), were just plain terrible. Yet another milestone in Web history documented by the Simpsons, hot on the heels of the Dotcom crash.

After the creator of a popular cartoon visits Springfield Elementary all the kids decide they want to create their own cartoon. Bart takes his creation to the Android's Dungeon comic shop and gets a thumbs down from Spiderman creator Stan Lee. Bart returns home trying to come up with a classic character but gets distracted when Homer looses his temper and picks a fight with a lawn chair. Bart then decides to create a new comic strip called Angry Dad, based on Homer's violently slapstick antics.

After the comic goes on sale in Comic Book Guy's store a man approaches Bart claiming that he's "from the Internet" and wants to make Angry Dad into a web series. Bart visits the company, Betterthantv.com (whose previous hits include "Bin Laden in a Blender") where the employees are playing air hockey, video games and generally goofing off. This is clearly in reference to many dotcom companies, including Google, known for their casual and quirky office environment. Lisa, ever the skeptic, questions the company's business model and is offered two million pieces of company stock if she promises to shut up.

Bin Laden in a Blender - it delivers what it promises.

Angry Dad becomes a huge sucess much to Homer's annoyance when he becomes the laughing stock of the town. BetterthanTV.com, however, goes bankrupt.

Repo Man: "Ah they went belly up like all the other internet companies!"
Milhouse: "Looks like the bubble burst."
Bart: "Bubbles can burst?"
Repo Man: "Yeah but it’s a golden age for the repo business, one that shall never end."

Incidentally, if anyone is interested the domain betterthantv.com is currently parked.

6: Credit Card information may be sold to Korean Gangsters.
Marge Gamer - Season 18, 2007

The above quote is part of the disclaimer for an online adventure game similar to World of Warcraft called Earthland Realms to which Marge becomes addicted. (A similar plot was also used by American Dad). South Korea has one of the largest gaming populations on the planet and leads the world in computer game fraud as well as so-called "Internet addiction".

Computer gaming has been a big part of the Simpsons from the very beginning, from Bart Simpson playing "Nintendo for cash" in the song Deep Deep Trouble to Maggie playing online poker then tabbing to the Sesame Street website so nobody sees her. Themes over the years have included violent video games, the high price of the games and video game addiction. Indeed I could easily write another top ten list on the topic of gaming alone.This is the first episode, however, with a plot that takes place inside an actual game environment.

The episode begins at a PTA meeting where a form gets passed around and all parents are asked to write down their email address. Marge is mortified because she still doesn't have one.

Just as a side note; Homer Simpson once mentioned his email address as chunkylover53@aol.com. One of the writers of the show registered the address in advance and apparently got thousands of responses after the show was aired.

Unfortunately the actual AOL account ended up getting hacked and people suddenly started getting messages from "Homer Simpson" trying to entice them to follow links that would install malware on their computers. A scheme worthy of Homer (a.k.a. Happy Dude) himself.

Anyways, back to the story and Marge, still an online newbie, decides to Google herself. "And all this time I thought Googling yourself meant the other thing".
A reference to the Flanders joke made the previous year.

She actually turns up on the top three out of 629,000 results, one an article about her popsicle art, second for her summer camp profile and third for her former job at Springfield Realty. Top three out of 629,000 - for a newbie Marge has a pretty high search engine ranking!

As Marge ventures further into the world of cyberspace she looks at her house from space and sees that Homer is lying in his hammock naked. She also falls foul to email syndrome; sitting waiting for email and repeatedly clicking refresh. "The only thing that changes is the banner ad".

Finally, totally bored, she decides to play an online RPG. At first she has trouble with the controls (as one does) but eventually ends up pulling all-nighters.

In the game she meets other Springfield residents including Mr Burns, who appears as a giant preying mantis asking "is this the Wall Street Journal Online?" (another Murdoch aquisition). She also discovers that the dreaded Shadow Knight, the most powerful player in the game, is actually Bart.

When Marge starts cramping Bart's style with her over-mothering he accidentally kills Marge’s character. Later, feeling guilty, he sacrifices two thirds of his life energy to bring her back to life only to have all the other players gang up on him and kill him.

5: You can’t use the word sex on the Internet!
Half Decent Proposal - Season 13, 2002

Whilst drinking wine and watching TV with her sisters, Marge discovers that Artie Ziff, her busy-handed prom date, has become an IT billionaire selling a product that converts the screeching sound made by dial-up modems into new age music.

Her sisters, who always hated Homer but liked Artie Ziff, decide to send him an email which turns out to be quite racy, including the line, "I want to sex you up".

"You can't use the word sex on the Internet!", but before Marge can stop them the email is sent. There then follows a scene where the data is seen zapping along through cables before cutting to man asleep beside a battered metal box marked Cisco Systems covered in a cloud of flies.

Artie later finds the email amidst various others warning of pending anti-trust suits (one of many Microsoft jokes.) Ziff would later go bust and become wanted for fraud by the SEC

4: Computer, kill Flanders!
The Computer Wore Menace Shoes - Season 12, 2000

In a plot somewhat reminiscent of Al Bundy's battle against the home computer in Married with Children, Homer buys what he thinks is a top of the line computer for $5,000 only to end up throwing it out in the trash. (If talking into the mouse and asking the computer to kill our neighbour was all it took we'd all be doing it right?)

Marge chastises Homer for throwing out the computer so he brings it back inside. Lisa finally shows him the basics and Homer changes his mind after seeing a cheesy Dancing Jesus animation. (The animation is based on the clichéd dancing baby screensaver made popular by Ally McBeal and brilliantly lampooned by Family Guy.)

Later Homer decides to create a webpage by pasting in the dancing Jesus, and various other clichéd animations such as screaming mouths and flying toasters to create Homer Simpson's Web Page.

“You’d think all the noises would be annoying, but they’re not.”
Lisa then tells Homer that “a web page is supposed to be a personal thing, you’ve just taken copyrighted material from everyone else, they could sue you for that."
So Homer changes the name to Mr. X's Website to avoid getting sued.

Homer then becomes obsessed, like so many others, with page hits and stays up late nights staring at an old skool visitor counter wondering why his website isn’t getting hits. He asks Lisa if she knows a way of boosting website traffic.

“You have to offer people something, a joke, an opinion, an idea”.

Truer words were never spoken. In fact, I've even gone so far as to use this episode as an example when trying to explain the right and the wrong way to create a website.

The internet is clogged up with millions of say-nothing sites, bursting full of obnoxious flashing ads and banners and no content whatsoever, zero, zilch. Indeed I'll bet everyone who's read this has come across many awful websites on par with Homer's, complete with gawdy colour schemes, awful sounds and ridiculous dancing gifs. And I bet, just like Homer Simpson, they're still sitting at home refreshing their page wondering why nobody’s visiting.

So the first rule, aesthetics; don't have any sounds automatically play when the page loads, keep the colours nice and, please, no more animated gifs! You want your visitors to come back, not send them staggering away with a bad headache.

The second rule is content. Without any text content, like Homer's site, search engines won't read any keywords so your site's not going to get any visits through search engines. Those with Flash intensive sites or sites with Flash-based intro screens take note.

Finally, and most importantly, people online are looking for something interesting or useful, they want entertainment, they want value. Homer's website, on the other hand, didn't have any purpose whatsoever.

...And so, back to the plot.

Having heard a rumour that Mayor Quimby spent the town’s entire pothole repair money on a swimming pool for himself Homer turns his page into a local muckraking site. (This was a type of website which was growing in prominence at the time, particularly after the Clinton/Lewinski scandal.)

The people of Springfield react positively to the site, despite, as Principal Skinner notes, Homer's poor grammar and spelling. Kent Brockman later does a story on the Mr X site but states that the real news is on TV, delivered by journalists. (A sentiment which would be repated ad-nauseum for the decade to follow.)

When Homer runs out of stories he decides to make up his own sensationalistic ones. When he releases a story that claims the government are using flu shots as a form of mind control he is abducted and taken to a mysterious island in what becomes a prolonged spoof the 60's cult TV classic The Prisoner.

This is obviously also the reason why Homer's, sorry Mr. X's website hasn't been updated in a while.

So, the moral of this particular story is that when Homer decided to give the people content he thought they might be interested in his website traffic suddenly went through the roof.
This is the a concept that's at the very core of Internet marketing, something which Homer himself is no stranger to having run his own Internet business...

3: Welcome to the Internet my friend, how may I help you?
Das Bus - Season 9, 1998

This is probably the episode with the highest amount of Internet quoteables on the list and probably the one most people would put on their number one spot. I'm sure there's plenty who'll read this and ask why it's only number three.

Homer learns that Flanders has an online business called FlanCrest Enterprises, selling religious rugs online and that Flanders and Maude are "making good scratch too."

"Internet eh? Scratch eh? ...Maude eh?"

Homer decides to read up on the subject and buys himself a copy of Wired and Internet for Dummies. "Oh they have the Internet on computers now!"

He sets up a home office in the living room, complete with his beloved drinking bird toy and a pen holder made out of butter to write delicious memos. He tells Marge that he needs to have a name that's cutting edge, "like Cutco, Edgecom, Interslice..."
Marge suggests the name Compuglobalhypermeganet, Homer dismisses the name at first but ends up using it.

Whilst impatiently waiting for a nude picture of Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager (a dedicated fanboy if ever there was one) to load over a dial-up modem Comic Book Guy sees a popup add for Homer, the "Internet King" and wonders if he can provide him with "faster nudity".

Comic Book Guy is without a doubt the biggest netizen in Springfield. Back in '96 when most people were only getting to grips with the Worldwide Web, he was already a veteran of online communities such as Usenet, in particular on alt.nerd.obsessive. Whilst meeting Homer in his office (a desk in the living room) he asks Homer if he can upgrade from a 28.8k modem to a 1.5 meg line. Homer stares at him blankly and waits for him to finish then asks, "can I have some money now?"

It's hard to believe we were crawling at that speed only 12 years ago which is why this episode is such a milestone episode, not just of the Simpsons but of the Internet itself. When it first went to air the Dotcom Bubble was already dangerously close to bursting point and one might speculate whether the writers actually saw it coming or not. Either way the episode so perfectly captures the get-rich-quick-especially-on-the-internet mentality of the late 90s like nothing else.

And what of Compuglobalhypermeganet?
Well, in the end Homer never did become a Dotcom millionaire, as Bill Gates arrived at the house with two grimacing nerds offering to "buy him out." Homer tries to play it cool in his own subtle way and says he accepts. "Buy him out boys!", shrieks Bill as the nerds trash Homer's office and break his pencils. When Homer asks what's going on Bill replies, "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks" and starts cackling maniacally.

2: Where's the any key?
King Size Homer - Season Seven, 1995.

Fans all agree that the golden age of the Simpsons was during the mid-nineties and it's easy to say why. This episode, which appears on many people's all-time favourite lists, including mine, involves Homer deliberately gaining more weight so that he can get on disability and work from home. It also contains the "any key" gag after which I've named this blog.

Having pigged out to his hearts content and doubled in size Mister Burns donates a remote terminal to the "bloated gastropod" (his words, not mine) allowing Homer to realise his lifelong dream (of which he has had many) of working from home.

"To start press any key, where's the any key? Is see esk, cetarl and pig-up but there doesn't seem to be any any key... Phew, all this computer hacking is making me thirsty, I think I'll order a tab."

In between holding a cup up to the computer, pressing the Tab key and waiting for cola to drop out Homer runs through a series of checklists such as venting radioactive gas (venting prevents explo-zion). After a while he finds that it's easier just to type "yes" to all the answers. When he later realises all he has to do is the press Y key he tells Marge that he's tripled his productivity. Eventually he becomes bored and starts hitting the Y key with a broom whilst watching TV, however when neighbourhood kids gather around the window laughing at him he decides to go out and watch a movie. So he dons his cape, mumu and newly-softened fatguy hat and leaves the drinking bird (which he got from his estranged half-brother Herbert Powell) to bob up and down pressing the Y key.

When Homer gets to the cinema he's told the seats are not large enough to accommodate him. He returns from the cinema in a huff to discover that the plastic bird has fallen over and that the reactor core is set to explode unless he can get to the plant and release the gas manually. Unable to use the phone ("the fingers you have used to dial are too fat, to obtain a special dialing wand please mash the keypad with Your palm now") he he hijacks an ice-cream truck and races to the plant to save the day.

Ok, ok, ok... So....
You're all probably wondering now what I think the best all-time Internet reference is?

Well let's see, we laughed about many big IT names like Cisco, Google and Microsoft but what about Apple?

1. You're all losers!
Mypods and Boomsticks - Season 20, 2008

Trying to appear cool to Bart and Lisa, Homer decides to buy tickets for all three to attend the Hullabalooza rock festival. Arguing with a clichéd moody generation-Xer working in the record shop, Homer states that the only good rock festival was the Us Festival.
"The what festival?"
"The Us festival. It was put on by that guy from Apple Computers."
"What computers?"

The Us Festival was one of the many costly blunders of former Apple goofball Steve Wozniak.
Back in '96 kids didn't know about Apple computers. Except for sound engineers or graphic designers most people would have had a vague memory of there being such a company back in the 1980s. The company was ripe for ridicule.

A lot has changed since then, of course. Apple has rebranded itself and is now percieved as being hip and innovative, it's new designer label approach earning itself legions of fans; the kind who believe that buying an overpriced custom PC or MP3 player will somehow transform them into a cool individual.

As you can probably tell by now I'm not exactly a fan of Apple. In fact, for me, the only things in the world worse than Apple products are Apple Evangalists. I'll never, ever understand why so much hype and hysteria exists about a company whose product line includes phones that have to be held a certain way for them to make or recieve calls. Apple are today what Nike were to the nineties, and once again, The Simpsons nailed it.

Mapple Clerk: "I see you're admiring our Mycube, it's fueled by dreams and powered by imagination."
Homer: "What does it do?"
Mapple Clerk: "You should ask yourself what can I do for it?"

Lisa (being an annoying know-it-all and therefore a key demographic) is enamoured at all the products and later becomes a Mypod owner. Eventually she gets into debt from downloading too many songs and decides to visit Steve Mobbs at the bottom of the sea asking if she could have a reduced payment plan. Steve replies, "I know our posters say Think Differently but our real slogan is No Refunds." Eventually Steve decides to offer her a job. Lisa is thrilled until she realises she has to stand on a street corner dressed up as a Mypod handing out flyers.

The true iconoclast of this episode, however, is Bart, delivering what I think is amongst the funniest Simpsons speeches of all time.

"You’re all losers! You think you’re cool because you buy a $500 phone with a picture of a fruit on it. Well, guess what? They cost 8 bucks to make and I pee on every one! I have made a fortune of you chumps and I’ve invested it all in Microsoft!"

Virtual Revolution - web test results

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:55:00 +0000

The Virtual Revolution test is actually quite in-depth and very much interactive, rather than being a linear "mostly A's"/"mostly B's" type of affair you usually get.
It's also very headwrecking in places.

In the show it claimed that younger people are generally more likely to skim and "go with the crowd" as far as information is concerned, something I think is potentially dangerous. They're also more prone to distraction. Whereas older people tend to take their time when making decisions and sourcing information.
Not surprisingly I'm someplace in between.

I'm a Web Leopard, apparently. I'm extremely fast and quick at finding information (I've had a lot of practice, of course) but I generally prefer to source information directly and don't trust "social sources". I guess, whilst I'm sure they include Twitter et all under that umbrella, specifically that means Wikipedia, a site which I always take with a grain of salt.

In the test I went to a government site for information on certain questions. That doesn't necessarily mean I trust governments any more than I do Wikipedia, but when it comes to science I'm more inclined to seek information from peer-reviewed sources that can be proven or debunked by learned professionals than ones where anyone can add or edit information. It isn't that I don't trust Wikipedia, on the contrary I find it an invaluable resource that I use quite regularly. If I were asked another question, like say, to research a question on the theory of gravity I would find Wikipedia the fastest way of getting that information but I would be wary of trusting its authority on more divisive things like the theory of evolution (for all I know it could have been edited by an Intelligent Design advocate just seconds before I got there) or the endlessly debated issue of climate change.

It's the same with the news. I'd trust a respected broadsheet before I ever trust a tabloid. I'd trust the BBC more than I'd trust Sky and CNN before Fox. You probably detect a not so subtle bias against Newscorp there, but that's because I value peer-reviewed journalism that lists sources and facts far more than I would those with an obvious bias. In Murdoch's case the bias is clearly in favour of Freedmanite economics and conservative political opinion best illustrated by his open support of both Reagan and Thatcher during the 1980s. American news network MSNBC, meanwhile, is widely regarded as the "liberal" network, perhaps partly as a cynical ploy to gain market share.

Of course in the United States it's all about the spectacle, so from Michael Moore on the left to Glen Beck on the right, differences of opinion always much more voluble and pronounced. Truth is, of course, that all mainstream media sources, to some extent or another, have to "sell" the news and are all guilty of spin and sensationalism to some degree or another. Just ask Charlie Brooker... (NSFW)

Anyways, that media-related digression aside, I found the information-sourcing aspect most interesting part of the test. It tested me, firstly, on where to get the information, secondly how to get that information and what questions/queries/search terms to use and finally how I evaluated that information, whether or not I found it trustworthy and whether I was satisfied with the results it gave me.

Now I didn't score all that high on the "multitasking" aspects which surprised me somewhat. Then again I did do this test after a day's work, when my multitasking muscles were already quite strained. (I shudder to think what Doctor Kawashima would have to say about it.)

I'd say if I done it first thing tomorrow morning with a skull-full of caffeine I might have scored a lot higher. Then again, though, the multitasking-specific tests require a lot of parallel concentration and some people are just better at it than others. So, unless you're an air traffic controller or a driver in the Formula 1, not scoring too high on it isn't necessarily the end of the world.

I know people who are quite capable of reading a book with a movie on in the background and not only do they not find this distracting, they're able to follow both, whereas I always find it's better to concentrate on one thing at a time, toggling through tasks token ring style, e.g. if A doesn't answer the phone I move onto task B. Because at the end of the day no matter how swift a multitasker you might be, if you're trying to write a letter or a piece of code whilst skimming emails and talking to someone on the phone at the same time, the person on the other end will notice it.

It's not just about concentration, either, so much as it is about courtesy. After all, in business today it's vital to be constantly in touch via phone, web and email but who wants to give a presentation to a room full of people endlessly flipping through their iPhones and Crackberries?

Rather than being a natural multitasker, I'm instead a "specialist".
I'm glad to see that. I guess in this day and age it could well be an advantage to be able to do lots of different types of things, at least personally. But at the end of the day companies aren't looking to employ anyone who's "done a little of this and a little of that" and you'll never see a "Wanted: Jack of All Trades" job advertised. They're always specific positions looking for a specific specialist in any given field, additional experience an advantage but not necessary.

In an age with so much information on tap, the temptation is to try and learn as much as one can, or worse, to try and just get by skimming various websites and bluffing one's way from one job to the next, but never actually mastering anything. In the last episode one interviewee made the point that, when you go to a doctor, you want to entrust your health to someone who's studied for years and read countless books cover to cover, not someone who's just skimmed over a load of websites. And that's true, I believe, of every industry.

This is an era of mass information and mass globalisation, one effective way stand out from the rest is to become a trusted authority within a specific field, to think with an SEO mindset and reduce your services to a precise set of keywords as you work towards carving out your own specialist niche.

Anyways, enough prattling on, I've gone off on enough tangents for today. I'm going to do the most important thing that every virtual revolutionary must do each day, I'm going to shut my computer down and disconnect.

Have a go at the test, I'd be interested to hear what other's have to say about it and what different animals are in this tiny Blogger menagerie.

The Virtual Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:31:00 +0000

One of the best documentaries I've watched in a long while has been The Virtual Revolution. Produced by the BBC this documentary investigates the enormous impact the Internet has had globally and the momentous changes that it has brought to our lives. Themes include freedom of information, privacy, government transparency, the impact it has had on business and on education not to mention our actual brains.

...Like, when your on the internet its like totaly different to reading shakespeer - lol...

One of the most interesting things the show investigated was whether use of internet actually altered how we source and process information. You can take part in this experiment yourself at the Virtual Revolution website by taking the web behavior test.

Gil Scott Heron claimed that the revolution will not be televised, but at least we can get the highlights. Plus we get to hear from all the big names (and Steve Wozniak for some reason) like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Twitter's Biz Stone plus the heads of other major players like Amazon and Paypal. There are also interviews with Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the internet and the other inventor of the internet, Al Gore.

Last, but certainly not least, the ever-versatile Stephen Fry is on hand to debunk all the Daily Mail-brand sensationalism and hysterical, "think-of-the-children!" technophobia with his trademark wit and eloquence.

It's not just thought-provoking stuff, it's also very entertaining.
Anyways, have a look for yourselves, first episode is here.

Soma FM - maintaining my workday sanity since 2003

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:37:00 +0000

One of my favourite websites has to be, without a doubt, Soma FM. It's a San Francisco-based website with various different themed radio stations playing different types of music, mainly electronic.

A long-running mainstay has to be Groove Salad with a playlist that runs from funky ambient, jazzy electronica to lounge and Cafe Del Mar-style chill.

However of late I've found myself listening more and more to Sonic Universe, which has some pretty out-there electronic jazz experiments with a lot of names I had hitherto never encountered before but will certainly be investigating. Some of it's pretty funky, some of it's pretty scary, some of it's very psychedelic, most of it is all three at the same time.

Well I finally got my Google Wave account...

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:29:00 +0000

...but nobody to play with.

Still waiting for invites of my own. When I get them I'll announce it here. Have a few promised already but there'll still be a few up for grabs. More details later.

Google is all about children's shows this week.

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:42:00 +0000

Well, I say kids shows, because I can't think of a better term right now. I wouldn't really say Wallace and Gromit are strictly for children, because of their huge popularity with adults, myself included.

At any rate, two children's favourites had their anniversaries celebrated by Google this week. The first being the 20th Anniversary of Wallace & Gromit followed later by Sesame Street, which has been on the air now for 40 years now, making it as old as the moon landing and, indeed, the network that would eventually become the Internet.

One suggestion, in case anyone from Google Ireland are reading and looking for image ideas for the google.ie front page, would be to also celebrate another children's (and adult) favourite, Dustin the Turkey who will be 20 this Christmas and would have won last years Eurovision were it not for the intervention of Vladimir Putin.

Anyways, thank you Google for rekindling fond childhood memories but also for souring them with the realisation that said memories were a considerable time ago.

For anyone else who reads this and feels the same spare a thought for Oscar the Grouch, 40 years living in a dustbin, or worse, poor Bert, 40 years old and still sharing a bedroom with his rubber-duck loving brother.

Googlewaveinvites.com is toast

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:18:00 +0000

http://twitter.com/googwaveinvite/status/4778886944

Google told them to stop. My theory on all of this is that Google's servers aren't up to the task. Hence the reasons invites can take up to a week to send.

And I was only 54,956 on the list to receive one - oh well!

Cool Twitter & Social Network Marketing Pack

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:31:00 +0000

Got this in my email this morning from Hubspot. The guys who run the well handy Website Grader site.

It's a full set of videos & PDFs on how to market yourself using social networks and on Twitter. Pretty handy.

Right - I'm going to stop begging for Wave Invites now...

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Because I couldn't keep my big mouth shut I'm now starting to get Wave spam from scammers. You click through and site says: "Oh I'm sorry the invites are gone - but while you're here..."
Yeah, yeah, I get it, fuck off.

It was stupid of me to follow the link in the first place. Thankfully it was only a site trying to scam me. Others are far more malicious though.

So if you're in the same boat as me beware of emails trying to redirect you to sites offering invites.

Couple of articles I found on "Google Wave Scams":

One

Two

Waaa!!! I want Google Wave NOWWWW!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:45:00 +0000

Cast your mind back to when you were a child and how you looked forward to opening your presents Christmas morning. Imagine yourself jumping out of bed, sprinting down the stairs and diving beneath tree, tiny clawed fingers at the ready to cut wrapping paper to ribbons and feast your eyes upon all those marvelous presents.

Now imagine there's nothing there.

That's sort of how I feel today, having looked forward for months to the debut of Google's new Wave service only to find no invite in my stocking. I guess all I can do is just sit tight, obsessively refreshing my Gmail and performing sleazy solicitations for invites on forums and blogs.

...Refresh again...no, nothing, ok, Publish Post....

New Webste - Sean Conlon Artist

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:47:00 +0000

Seán Conlon is a self taught artist. A native of County Kildare, Seán was educated and grew up in Newbridge. Although a talented artist from a very young age, it wasn't until 1983 that he took his painting more seriously and began to exhibit regularly in group and solo exhibitions. Selling most of his paintings and being commissioned to paint various local scenes, many of which were sent to relatives in the USA and the UK.

Seán travelled to France in 1985 and 1986 where he painted in Collioure, a famous artists colony in the south of France, There he worked with many different artists from all over Europe and America. Although only 23 years old he received much praise and admiration for the quality and detail of his work from the public and many of his peers.

Our New Website - Great New Services & Amazing Web Design Special Offers

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:42:00 +0000

As some of you may have no doubt noticed the Brionglóid Media website was offline for a while pending a major overhaul. To be quite honest the original site was a few years old by this stage and looked it. But the much-needed redesign kept getting pushed back by both a number of new projects plus a huge increase in regular website maintenance work. Which is a good complaint to have, of course.

The new site is now 100% up and running and it isn't just the look of the site that's changed but the content too. The most notable difference between the old site and the new, other than the look of it, is the new format with a whole new links section, a completely redesigned portfolio section a section for articles plus a new customer testimonials section. New services have also been added including a copywriting service and, perhaps most significantly, we've added a whole new section devoted to web and graphic design special offers.

Our new special offers, and indeed the entire new site content, was specifically devised to reflect the current - argh! I nearly said "the current economic climate" didn't I? I hate that phrase, it's the phrase awful people use to justify price hikes and job cuts - so let's just blurt it straight out and say it. The Recession. Yes, we're in a recession.

In a recession, if you want to stay in business it's vital that you sell, sell, sell! And in this day and age, if you want to sell, your company has to have a well designed website - simple as that. Hence the genesis of my new Recession Buster website package; a complete website for just €250. Or for those who just wish to have a one-page website, there's also the Business Card website - which is not only the cheapest but also, for your money, the most effective way to gain a substantial web presence.

Our other packages include our Web Starter web design package, which is designed specifically for those who are looking to take their first small steps on the worldwide web and one giant leap for their business. Similarly our Business Builder and Business Builder PLUS packages allow companies to avail of the full spectrum of web 2.0 technologies including blogging, social networking, live RSS feeds, podcasts and Twitter, as well as traditional Search Engine Optimisation, for less than the cost of an ad in the local newspaper.

Finally our Online Superstar package has been developed specifically for the arts and entertainment world such as musicans, artists, bands or events management and promotions companies or indeed anyone who wishes to leverage the full potential of Internet marketing techniques, social networking, blogging and multimedia services to maximise their exposure.

In addition to our new special offers, new services and existing web services and IT consultancy services, we will also continue to offer graphic design services such as poster/flyer design, corporate literature and brochure design, logo design and graphic design for websites

If you're interested in these services, or want to learn about our other additional services and special offers, visit our new website at www.briongloid.net or contact us today.

Back in the Saddle

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:06:00 +0000

I haven't had much time for this blog lately and a lots happened since I was last active here; professionally, personally in the IT world and in the world in general. Regarding the professional, I'll be dealing with that in my next post and as for the personal, well, that's personal - suffice to say I'm no longer based in the Republic of Ireland - yes I've gone international!

But first I thought it might be a good opportunity to look back on the last few months and the happenings in the world of IT and the world in general, so here goes....

The shambolic global economy pretty much dominated the news from the beginning of 2009 overshadowing Obama's supposedly-triumphant and historical inauguration. All those months and months slogging away on the campaign trail only to end up with the most unenviable job on the planet.

But then Springtime came and a breath of fresh air! We forgot all about the ailing economy and instead found a whole new thing to worry obsessively about - swine flu! Though swine flu did claim fatalities, it has not yet become the apocalyptic 1918-type pandemic the press predicted it would be. For those involved in tourism, however, it might has well have done.

The tourism sector took an almighty hammering this year. More people trying to save their money meant less people going on holidays and of those people that did, the majority tended to opt for all-inclusive resorts, budgeting carefully, with little if any of their money venturing outside the resort. Swine flu paranoia did not help matters.

Spain has a particularly bad time of it lately. With its construction industry in freefall and a severe drop in tourism unemployment continued to rise. The final nail in the coffin being delivered last month with the bomb attacks in Mallorca, one of Spain's most popular holiday destinations, right at the very height of the tourist season.

The worst hit countries in Europe are all those whose economies were over-exposed to the property market, including Spain, Greece and Ireland. Ireland, whilst it may not exactly be a hot sun destination, suffered from a dramatically diminished construction sector and saw its economy buckle badly. Tourism was one of the worst hit areas, in particular the hospitality sector with many companies closing down and many more doing all they can to battle through the bad times. (The Irish government, however, has clearly far more important matters to worry about.)

When the media wasn't driving us all into depression talking about terror attacks, swineflu, toxic assets, GM bailouts and Bernie Madoff it was prattling on about Twitter. 2009 was the year when the mainstream media turned on to Twittermania. Previously Twittermania had been confined to specific websites and publications such as IT or business journals but as more and more celebrities started to tweet the press, especially the tabloid press, pounced upon it ravenously. After all 140 characters per tweet may not seem like much to you or me, but, with the right accompanying photo, is way more than enough for a tabloid newspaper to fill two entire pages of speculations and/or complete fabrications on celebrity love affairs.

Twitter was a word that seemed to crop up pretty much everywhere this year. When Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie Bruno failed to do as well as expected Time magazine blamed Twitter, and when Iran found itself on the brink of civil war a few months back, once again Time magazine cited Twitter, claiming it was the only way for not just the American press - but also the American government - to get a legitimate, on-the-ground picture of what was really going on there. And yet, whilst Time and sibling company CNN argued that Twitter may be the ideal way for the Obama Administration to gain real-world intelligence on Iran, it was not, they insisted, the place to get information about swine flu.

And that's where all this Twittermania has gotten us - to the point where what was once a website for freaks and shut-ins to deliver up-to-the-minute broadcasts about their cats has become so hyped by the major media companies that they now have to issue globally-telivised statements to the public that Twitter should not be considered an authority on health and medical matters. But then by that stage we'd forgotten all about Iran and swineflu anyway and the economy, too, was but a distant hazy memory because now it was all about Michael Jackson.

Jackson, who was planning his huge comeback gig apparently - though how huge it would have actually been we can only speculate - was found dead at some point in time. When, exactly, I really can't remember. In fact I can scarcely remember a time when we didn't have Michael Jackson headlines on every newspaper every single morning.

But anyways, yes the King of Pop popped his clogs and the net result was, seconds after the news broke, the Internet swarmed with Michael Jackson related spam emails and "click here to see pictures" viruses. Millions, perhaps even billions, of people woke up that morning (depending on their timezone) and, though they couldn't have given two hoots the day before, suddenly felt an overpowering urge to jump on the bandwagon and pronounce their undying love for Jacko. Amidst this Diana-esque blubfest there were, undoubtably, many who felt quite legitimatly choked up about it, but not nearly as chocked up as the actual Internet was.

This afforded journalists the sublime opportunity to combine their two favourite topics of the year - Michael Jackson and Twitter. Twitter was clearly not up to the task of serving all those zillions of Jackson-related tweets and has been suffering sporadic outages ever since with the famous Twitter "fail whale" becoming an increasingly familiar and frequent sight.

Another website that managed to create a stir this year was Hunch.
The new website uses a very clever system to answer questions like what book should I read or what album should I listen to. The concept is far from new, I've been using Gnod for this sort of thing for years, but the major difference is that Gnoosic, for example, will ask you for favourite bands and make suggestions on them based on other people's suggestions. So if I say I like Massive Attack I'm going to be asked whether I like Portishead and other suggestions will then be made based on my reply. Whereas Hunch asks you less direct questions and seems to be more deductive in nature, it asks you what sort of album would you like to hear, what styles of music do you like, whether or not you care what decade the album was recorded, etc, etc.

I put it through its paces and I have to say, it performed quite well, it recommended books, albums and movies to me that I either already liked or were very close to what I invariably would like - without actually asking me what bands/books/authors/movies/directors I actually do like. It also told me, based on a few simple questions, that I probably would not enjoy the new Star Trek movie all that much and it turned out to be correct, I was quite disappointed by it. Plus it managed to pick my favourite types of beer right on the nose.

In order to to get the full value of Hunch, the site says, you need to fill out what amounts to a very extensive questionnaire. Many of the questions I simply skipped on the basis that they were more geared towards a North American audience and therefore didn't really apply to me. Although a lot of the questions are pretty predictable personality test questions with others you do get the feeling you have somehow become the unwitting participant in some massive global focus group and the more questions you answer the more you start to feel as though you're being deliberatly profiled and separated into specific demographics.

My suspicions were first aroused on the very first question when it presented me with four pictures of different types of fries; 2 were generic, one was clearly from McDonalds and the other from Burger King. If someone at Hunch could explain the scientific theory behind that one I'd be delighted to hear from it. In fact, with Hunch, the hunch that I got - and it's probably because I'm a paranoid Internet conspiracy nut and all - was that a lot of the questions were put in at the behest of special interests, like, for example RIAA (the amount of questions I was asked about the morality of internet downloads was what really put me into tinfoil hat mode) or some political party or polling organisation (lots of questions about immigration also - the hell do I care if Mexicans take their jobs?) and in the end I started to feel like I was a character in a Neal Stephenson novel

And that's the thing about Hunch, you see, it's not just very clever piece of programming it's a marketing/public company's wet dream. Still I've no doubt in my mind that Hunch, or its successors, represent the future of search; a search engine that knows you as well as it knows the Internet and can sort through thousands of search results to provide you with exactly the type of website or information you are looking for. And by the time this techology truly comes into its own I'll probably just be some old fart tellin' the kids "in my day we had this thing called privacy!"

True, Hunch and Twitter made plenty headlines, they could never really hope to steal the spotlight from the Big Three, especially Google. Twitter in particular made big splash in 2009 but Google was to become a tidal force onto itself starting with the announcement of their new Google Wave system.

I strongly believe this is a killer app in the making - it's going to be absolutely huge - in fact I predict it's going to spawn a thousand copycats and create a movement which will change how people communicate in business, maybe not everyone's, but certainly my own. No more emails back and forth, no more attachments, just drag and drop files, images - everything basically!

I'm really sick of email, really sick of it. Sending text and attachments to someone@someplace.somewhere has been with us for decades now. Flared trousers and gold zodiac medallions are no longer hip, disco is dead and the Shah of Iran too, and yet here we are in the 21st century stuck with horrible emails - sending them, writing them, repying to them, waiting for replies to them...
When you think about it the process takes up so much time and we've only got so much patience and I haven't even mentioned all the spam yet!

Wave is going to change all that. It's going to make email obsolete, instant messanging obsolete and with integrated Google Talk and their new Google Voice it looks like they're going to blow my beloved Skype out of the water too. But the very best thing about Google Wave, I think, it is that right now legions of developer geeks are already beta-testing and tweaking it and developing little widgets for it it and so however excited I might be about Google Wave itself I'm even more excited about the inevitable mashups which are going to result from it. How many mashups have we seen with Google Maps? Yeah, you know the guys who made Google Maps? The same guys created Wave.

At Microsoft HQ, meanwhile, a plot was being hatched to steal Google's thunder. Firstly with the launch of their new Bing search engine, and secondly by taking on Google Docs by announcing that their new Microsoft Office 2010 would include free online versions of their popular Office applications - namely Word, Excel and Powerpoint. (Which, in industry terms, is sort of like witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall)

Google responded by really upping the ante announcing that they would be entering the operating system game themselves and why not, they've challenged Microsoft on pretty much everything else and I think all of us geeks, whilst surprised by the sudden announcement, weren't quite so surprised by the notion itself. Nor, for that matter, that it would neatly coincide with the release of Windows 7

Google Chrome OS is based upon the Cloud concept with everything happening inside the actual browser. Considering how much I love the browser I can't wait to see the OS! Don't expect it on your PC just yet, though, just on netbooks. So, for the foreseeable future at least, it looks like Microsoft will still be top dog of the operating system pack with the added advantage of being able to watch its closest competitors loose more of their market share. The move will give Google not one but two flagship operating systems - both based on Linux - Android it's phone OS and the new Chrome OS. Obviously this has created a little tension between the companies, particularly for one Eric Schmidt who, before recently resigning from Apple, was on the board of both companies. Many believe this split will become an all-out war. Fake Steve Jobs doesn't seem that worried about it though, but I somehow imagine the real Steve Jobs is.

Whenever I mention the Big Three, I refer, of course, to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, rather than Apple. However I may well have to change that because another major landmark in the IT world has been the announcement that Yahoo are getting out of the search business and from here on in anyone searching on Yahoo will actually just be searching a Yahoo branded version of Bing. How this is going to ultimately play out for webmasters like Yours Truly remains to be seen but somehow I still don't see Microsoft dominating the search market any time soon any more than I see Google dominating the operating system market. But still there seems to be a lot of changes in direction recently within the major companies. Old alliances are breaking down and new ones are being forged with some companies jostling for more room at the trough by entering new markets whilst others step aside and make way for them.

Interesting times indeed. And now that I've played catch-up with all the major external happenings let's now move on and allow me to tell you what we've been up to...

New Website: Virtual Assistant At Work

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:31:00 +0000

International Virtual Assistant Service

The foundation of any successful enterprise is a strong, reliable and organized administration. And behind every great executive is a trustworthy and reliable personal assistant. By outsourcing administrative tasks you not only save on utilities, materials and labor costs, but also gain a valuable employee with years of experience in international business administration, public relations and marketing.

Production 63 Promotions and Events - Ennis, Co. Clare

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:18:00 +0000

Production 63 Promotions and Entertainment in Clare

Production 63 was established in March 2007 by Gerard Sweeney and Jacqueline Walshe. Based in Ennis, Co. Clare our objective was to facilitate live music and events Clare by conceiving ideas, creating opportunities and using our many contacts in the entertainment, corporate, media and other sectors. The provision of quality live events is the main driving force of Production 63 Event Management and in a short time we have earned a reputation for doing just that with past Production 63 Shows and Concerts.

Variety Concerts, presentation of single act performances, independent programmes, corporate workshops and conferences, are among the events undertaken to date and in the planning process at present.

Wilkinson Accountancy Services

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:09:00 +0000

Wilkinson Accountancy Services located in Woodford, Co. Galway, is more than just an accountancy firm. Wilkinson Accountancy Services provide a range of other services including financial and business consultancy services. In an age of economic uncertainty, Wilkinson Accountancy Services continues to provide sound business advice for all Irish enterprises, with over 25 years experience of working in small, medium and blue-chip companies improving financial and management reporting, accounting procedures and processes, implementing internal controls, ensuring good corporate governance and raising finance.

Services include:

Financial and Management Reporting

Bookkeeping and Accountancy

Electronic systems

Business planning and strategic development

Internal controls and corporate governance

Do you remember the good ole days before the Ghostblog?

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:38:00 +0000

Yeah, I know, I know. Haven't been anywhere near this blog in aeons.
Whole lotta stuff been goin' on lately which I'm not going to go into right now and also a few new websites and projects which I'll be announcing shortly. Most notably, perhaps, is that Briongloid.net is currently undergoing a refit, with a whole new look and new content. I'm also using Joomla this time, to make adding content faster and easier - but more on that later.

Anyways, to commemorate my negligence....

New Website for Irish Tea and Coffee Sales

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:13:00 +0000

We are proud to announce the launch of Irish Tea and Coffee Supplies [Classic Tea and Coffee Company / Italian Coffee Company]

They are the approved agents for Lavazza coffee in Munster and supply coffee, tea and related products to bars, cafes, restaurants and bistros throughout the Midwest region.

They also sell a range of quality coffee machines from small office machines to larger cafe and catering models and also offer a coffee machine repair and maintenance service.

How to Get Rich Quick - This One Really Works!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Where's the Any Key!?) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:49:00 +0000

1. Buy lots of domains really cheap.

2. Set them all up as online banks.

3. Get billions from Brian Cowen!