Too Blue to Blog

Internet Woes

No, I've not suffered abuse from militant POLs. Well, actually I have, but that was not in this forum so its not really germane to discuss it here and now, and, as it happens they were of the subspecies whose arguments were so weak, despite their venom, that it was actually a bit of light relief to roast them on spit of reality.

My real downer has come from the fact that my hosting company has, with a whole 20 minutes notice, disabled my most successful Facebook application, not on the grounds of it's questionable taste, but because it's just been too successful (over 113,000 users). Basically, take all the invective you can find at Devil's Kitchen, Mr Eugenides, or your own personal favourite swearblog, on their most enraged of days, add a little real vitriol and multiply it by a thousand, and you're getting close to why I've been either too angry or too down to blog, even aside from the practical considerations of finding a new home for the application.

The good news is that the Backing Boris and Say No2ID Facebook applications that I also host are unaffected, though Facebook Blogroll has taken some collateral damage, though I expect this to be very short term.

On a note of cheer, on a night that has been bleak even weatherwise, I'm very pleased to be on Thunder Dragon's ballot paper for Iain Dale's poll of political blogs. I've been struggling with my own submission; fifteen, including Thunder Dragon, are shoe-ins, but its proving very hard to drop some of the contenders for the remaining slots.

And the coaches coming up with their final thirty for the Rugby World Cup think they have it hard!

Backing Boris II

Neatly linking together yesterday's posting about Facebook and one from earlier today on BoJo's bid for the London Mayorality, Liberty's Requiem has been pleased to provide a little technical consultancy on, and hosting for an unofficial "I'm Backing Boris" Facebook application to back Boris' bid. The application allows supporters show their supprt by displaying The Thunder Dragon's campaign poster on their Facebook profile page, along with a few other goodies such as links to relevant Facebook groups and 'Boris TV'. I was quite proud of my De Pfeffelometer which charts the progress in application sign ups!

Sign up now, just click the button on the banner above!

The Internet - What Is It Really For?

Wired...but in to what?

Posting has been lightnon-existant for the last couple of weeks as a succession of stories have been ruthlessly ripped apart by better commentators than myself. I've also been conducting a little experiment.

Last week I highlighted a couple of humorous items on common perceptions of the Internet and the behaviour you find therein. I'd been too lazy to go and find them myself so the credit is due to those mentioned in the original postings. Today however, I can report the results of a personal experiment, one that appears to fully justify the slightly cynical views in the two video clips I posted, rather than the more lofty ideas of some Internet evangelists.

The platform under test was StalkerFacebook, as it seems to be the social networking site of the hour. Leaving aside the more sad terminology used on the site, such as the endless variants of 'X wants to be your friend, do you want to be friends with X', and the distinctly dubious practice of poking complete strangers I can actually see why people like it. There are enough privacy features to stop it turning in to a pseudo-dating site, it seems stable and pretty easy to use, and the way third party content may be added means it will hopefully stay this way.

Being a good scientist as well as a test subject I created a control sample. Being a bad developer outside of my familiar Microsoft toolset it took longer than expected to create both hence the light blogging of late. However in the end I'd got enough put together to launch both on an unsuspecting public. The control subject was a worthy little Facebook application designed to help Facebook users share good blogs of the moment amongst their friends, with various recommendation features. It's pretty similar to the various 'My Bookshelf', 'My DVDs', and 'My Music' type applications, but unlike these themes seemed unique in its class. It took probably about twelve hours, end-to-end, to develop. The test subject took three hours to knock together. I won't give too many details on it, as this might hasten it's banning from Facebook; I can say though that while it is certainly not pornographic, it is decidedly smutty.

Both were launched amongst the same initial four users, but a couple of weeks have had very different fates. The graph below summarises the results to date.



One is now showing distinct signs of early viral spread, users worldwide amongst its over 4000 (at the time of writing) devotees, growing at a rate of over 500 a day at present and accelerating constantly. The other has reached the dizzying heights of seven users...yes...that slight blue tint to the X-axis.

There are no prizes of guessing which was which. Sex, does after all, does still seem to sell.

The graph above updates automatically if you should want to see the ongoing progress of the experiment.

The Internet v Real Life

The previous post put me in mind of another clip I saw a few weeks ago. I can't remember who posted it, so a hat tip to who ever it was. I finally tracked it down again on YouTube so here it is. At least I can't lose it again now I've got it on my own blog!



OK, It's slightly cynical, but once again many a true word...

Internet - Myth and Reality

Some of the blogs I read beat my own for quantity, and nearly all do for quality. One that consistently does both is Dizzy Thinks. The video clip he has dug up today made me laugh. I'd encourage anyone who hasn't done so, to go and read the original blog, but I've reproduced the clip below for the terminally lazy.



There is more than an element of truth to it all. One thing that amazes me is the ability of the porn sites to register a domain name for nearly every variant spelling of some of the more heavily used regular sites. I have to admit, I don't quite get it; I mean, just because you misspell the name of your bank when you are trying to get on to your on-line banking system doesn't necessarily mean you're suddenly going to think 'stuff paying that bill, I'll go and have a quick sherman instead'.