Just a quick rant.
At the moment I use my Sony Android tablet more than any other gadget, and probably even more than my notebooks at times [because there is really quite a lot that the tablet is capable of]. Obviously, among the million and one things that I use the tablet for, I do a good deal of web surfing on it also.
Given that the tablet has a 9.4″ screen, very often I prefer to view the full/normal version of websites rather than the mobile versions. In fact sometimes the mobile versions look rather ridiculous on a screen of that size. However since the device is essentially a mobile device and it runs mobile versions of web browsers, I’m often forced into viewing the reduced versions. Usually there is the option to switch back to normal version, but somehow it doesn’t quite stick, and I’m forced back to mobile every time I go back to the homepage, change a language option or do just about anything. A good example of this are social networks like Facebook and Google+, which are currently annoying the heck out of me. And then of course there are websites that don’t even have the option of switching back…. *sigh*
So is it just me, or is anyone else currently bothered by this? Does anyone else think that this is pretty much a bug that needs to be fixed rather than a feature?
Not exactly a new idea, but I get the feeling this one could get interesting/useful.
“We are an open community of developers building resources for a better
web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Anyone can contribute and each person who does makes us stronger. Together we can continue to drive innovation on the Web to serve the greater good. It starts here, with you.”
Check out WebPlatform.org.
Due to requests from friends [since a very long time ago] and some recent developments, I finally sat down and came up with a way of having private content on Verse. The code and the solution itself are somewhat messy, mainly because a Wiki is basically not designed for private content [quite the opposite…]. But well, so far it looks like it works. It is now possible to have private categories, all items belonging to which would be private. Private categories can be accessed by certain user groups.
It should be kept in mind though, that this is basically like a lock on a diary. It is simply for the purpose of picking and choosing what content will be shared with whom, but it should not in any way be considered truly secure. So basically don’t store your credit card numbers in there please.
Now, anyone who wants to use this feature, should tell me to set category[s] and user group[s] for them.
It was really “interesting” today, when I ended up having to do a bit of an analysis on certain footsteps on my website visitor tracking tools to find out that it’s been in fact people, human beings, who have attacked Verse with stupid commercial posts and some other nonsensical twaddle. Oh, and guess what, some of them even went ahead and posted links on Twitter, to the garbage they had posted to Verse. Here’s a couple of examples [it might be a bot posting the stuff to Twitter though, of that I’m not certain…]:
http://twitter.com/#!/julie86smith/statuses/1207024033464320
http://twitter.com/#!/lutushia/statuses/1298952494260224
Of course the links in the posts now direct to deleted pages… I deleted the contributions of all these users from Verse, and reported them to Twitter. I also made a rather big change to Verse’s registration system today. I’ve changed the code so that it’s no longer possible to simply register an account and start using Verse. New users now have to request for an account, and then one of the admins would have to review their request and permit the account to be created, before the user can use Verse. This isn’t all that conventional for a wiki system… but oh well, people have to misuse absolutely everything, and you end up having to deal with it.
As I’ve been going through yet another one of those extremely busy periods, I’ve been out of the loop with some of the latest developments in the world of social networks and legal patents. So I hadn’t read or heard about FB’s recent work of art till today. Today I had a conversation with a Good friend, Twain, who kindly brought me in the loop with what’s been going on. Apparently, Facebook has been awarded the patent for “Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network”. Check this link, and this link for the full story.
Well, I’m honestly shocked at what they seem to be getting away with. Actually, on a second though, I basically don’t think they’ll be getting away with this. As I told my friend, I think this is very much like stealing a piece of the ladder that everyone is, or wants to be climbing. And a good number of online services out there have in fact been climbing this ladder as long as Facebook has, if not longer. Orkut is an example of a social network that’s been providing the news feed for a long while now. There are also services with a more specific purpose that do the same.. Last.fm and Goodreads would be examples. And I could bring a dozen other examples just of the top of my head.
So, exactly how does Facebook think that they have a right to be doing this? How is it that they managed to get this patent? Oh well, I think there are reasons I don’t get too close to the worlds of business and law. I’m better off with engineering, math and code. Things that make some logical sense…
But even though I don’t have much of a view on the topic, I have a firm belief that other online services are just not going to accept this. I have a feeling that Facebook has just brought together the ingredients for an upcoming fiasco. Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…..
I love OpenID. =) I really do… I guess it’s obvious by now. I’ve always been intrigued by![openid[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S38mx-gLfeI/AAAAAAAAASQ/GvbBfdQhBJg/openid%5B1%5D_thumb%5B2%5D.gif?imgmax=800 "openid[1]")
the idea, so much so that a couple of years ago I started serving my own OpenID on Aasemoon.com.
Recently I decided it was time Verse supported OpenID, and after a few evenings of playing around with the PHP OpenID libraries, now it pretty much does that. The thing is, I have no idea how well this works. A lot of testing has to be done and I’m certain that there are still tons of bugs… but I guess I’ll perfect it in time. =) Also, you can now use your Verse profile as your OpenID, in other OpenID enabled website. So yes Verse serves OpenIDz too now. =) Or at least as far as my testing of it goes….
2 things..
I just rebuilt Verse’s edit toolbar entirely… the wiki syntax for using every single available tool on the Verse pages, can now be pasted to the page through the edit toolbar. I guess that makes the whole system much easier to use….
I have created a new music twine… this one is for Sleepthief. Check it out and add stuff if you like… =)
I’ve been playing with some new options and extensions for Verse in the past few days.. and so far it looks like I’ve came up with a couple of useful new tools that I’m pretty satisfied with.
First of all, Verse pages now have a couple of “statistics” lines at the very bottom. There’s a list of contributors, and also a number of the times a page has been loaded, and the date of last edit on the page.
The edit pages now include a toolbar… exactly like the one Wikipedia has. Took a rather ugly hack on my template among other things… but it’s neat. You can use it to add some simple wiki syntax.
The video embedding tool can now embed more than just YouTube videos. A bunch of other services including Vimeo are also supported now.
I re-did the feed reader tool too, from the scratch. Now you can display both RSS and Atom feeds on the wiki pages, including the descriptions. And the way it shows up on the page can be customized too.
And of course my favorite new tool which is not even a real extension [it’s more of a template hack], is a very small and simple syntax that allows you to hide a section of the page, and show it with a click on a link. This is specially useful since sometimes a wiki page can get very very long, and if there are a ton of videos posted to a page for instance, it’s better if the entire content of the page doesn’t show up at once. I also did consider having a “next page” option… in fact that’s what I did first. But then that was too bloggie… and I wanted all the sections of the page to be there at the first look, and just hide the content. So this looks like the best solution, and works perfectly now. =)
There’s a ton of more new features.. and you can check out Verse’s help page for a more complete list of what tools are available now. 😉
![openid[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S38mxRjNRLI/AAAAAAAAASM/5GoUsh5QOpo/s1600-h/openid%5B1%5D%5B4%5D.gif "openid[1]")
