Is it the beginning of the end? (or the end of the beginning)

It’s been a while since I last posted here – so maybe it’s time for another complaint about something!

After reading an article on the BBC News website yesterday about The Pirate Bay becoming blocked in the UK, it got me thinking about the state of the Internet, and how it will look in a couple of years.

Now I’ve never used The Pirate Bay or any similar services, I’ve got better things to do. My concern is not over the content which is being blocked. My concern is with the concept of controlling the Internet. When the Internet was created, it was a pretty hippy place – a place outside of Government control, but not necessarily a wild, lawless place – almost a communist society. It was very idealistic.

Then people took advantage of this by using the system to distribute content illegally and instantly. And this shouldn’t be happening. But what also shouldn’t be happening is Governments filtering the Internet.

A few years ago, we thought China were being tough by filtering the Internet to protect their regime. But now we’ve got threats like SOPA, and now actual Internet filtering in the UK. And why? To protect capitalism. Now, in my opinion, those reasons aren’t too different. Either way it’s filtering to protect the Government’s interests.

And the final point I’d like to end on is if Governments think it’s okay to filter one website, what stops them filtering more? Are we now at the top of a very slippery slope?

Should Facebook open up their “Like” data?

Facebook is generating loads of data about who “like”s what around the internet. Should they be considering opening up that data to allow other people to be able to use it?

How would other people use it?

Website owners could offer “most-liked” content on their site (like “most popular”) based on like data. At the moment there is no way for site owners to obtain the number of times their content has been liked, so it is not possible to do this yet.

Obviously, the biggest threat to Facebook for opening this up would be rivals like Google and Bing. If they could then use this like data to work out which web pages were most popular with real people, then they could potentially revolutionise their search. Facebook wants to stay ahead of the game, and needs to keep their options open.

As I said in my previous post, I think it’s important for people to open up APIs of their data. On the whole, Facebook does this quite well, but there are some bits of data, like this, that they are tactically holding back.

Why the world needs APIs

I think it is essential for the world to have APIs.

APIs are a great way of taking the best bits of a site and allowing other sites to use it. I think one way that APIs should be being used much more is in authentication. People are signing up for accounts all over the web: what if you could use an account from one site to load data into another, similar site? So, for example, sign into MetaCafe with your YouTube account, pulling across all your favourite videos, so that MetaCafe can use that information to provide you with a better user experience.

From the user’s point of view, they don’t need to create lists of favourite videos on different sites, because it could be one list. All their comments and ratings on videos can be moved around too.

But then you’ve got privacy concerns, of course. But I think quite a lot of sites are able to put together a fair-use policy on their APIs so that everyone must use them sensibly.

I have put together a few APIs, because I believe it is the way forward. People need to connect their data together, otherwise they are doing too much work for very simple tasks.

Formatting JSON like the Facebook Graph API

A recent project of mine required me to format JSON in a similar way to the Facebook Graph API. So I wrote a bit of PHP code to do the job.

Is privacy such a major concern?

People are constantly fussing about the privacy Facebook offers. When Facebook launched their new auto-customization services, to customize websites automatically, people went crazy. They didn’t like the fact that other websites knew what type of books or films they like.

If I’m honest with you, I don’t mind people knowing that I like the film Ocean’s Eleven or that I listen to Scouting For Girls … or even that I’m not too bothered about reading! If I didn’t want people to know that, I wouldn’t have filled it out on my Facebook profile.

This made me wonder: do people really add stuff to their Facebook accounts that is “secret”? If so, how stupid are you to not have changed your privacy settings?

It’s not like Facebook are giving away actual sensitive information. If Facebook started telling 3rd party sites my email address (without my permission) or the content of private messages I send to my friends, then I’d start getting worried. But they haven’t. They are sharing public information. What’s the big deal?

I suppose other Facebook users aren’t as familiar with tech stuff as myself though, so maybe they were concerned about the website knowing who they were before they’d connected. I wouldn’t know anything about it though, as I tried to use the services but I couldn’t because I’m British.

Approxidates

I realised that I hadn’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d post with news of my latest creation.

It’s a website called Approxidates.

Bascially, it’s a calendar. You have a calendar, your Facebook friends all have calendars. You set the status of a day to either busy or available. Once you’ve done this, you can compare your calendar with your friends’ very quickly and easily, then it highlights the days when all the people are not busy.

It saves time organising events and generally makes life easier.

Second-class citizens

The internet has been great in levelling the playing field for everyone using it. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, how old you are, or what gender you are, you can share your view on the internet and get loads of information from anywhere.

Or can you?

You may be wondering what I’m talking about. Whether I’m going to talk about governments watching what people do. Whether I’m going to talk about internet access. Whether I’m going to talk about class actually mattering on the internet.

Actually, I’m going to talk about content availability. What I find when using certain features on the internet is that some services are only available in the USA.

I was amazed to hear that a couple of years ago, Google introduced a music previewing feature in search results. I went to Google and did a search… no music previews. It was only after a bit of searching around that I realised that this feature is only available in America. How stupid. People listen to music all over the world, why should this feature only be available in the USA? Copyright issues, probably.

Another similar instance is when I downloaded the service Boxee for my laptop. Turns out that in the UK, you can only get a couple of features. So Boxee is pretty pointless: I can search YouTube and the BBC iPlayer much more quickly in FireFox than on Boxee, so they’re loosing out on the non-American market. Probably down to copyright again.

It’s interesting. The internet has completely changed everything in the world: the way people communicate with friends, the way people meet new people, collaborate, share ideas, research, broadcast ideas, buy and sell stuff, distribute products, make money, play games and much more. So why can’t things like copyright rules adapt to this?

If somebody decided 20 years ago that the internet shouldn’t be used to transfer money, then many of the things above wouldn’t be there today.

We need to change our attitude, we need to treat everyone equally otherwise it’s pretty pointless having services for the entire world if you can only use them in the United States of America!

What’s happened to software?

About 10 years ago, when I was 7, I remember our computer. We had a Windows 95 PC and it had some pretty cool features. Looking back now, it was pretty cool (mainly for the novelty value) and I wish I could get some of the stuff onto my clunky Vista machine (which actually has more RAM than the 95 PC had hard disk space).

We had some cool things… some awesome screensavers (including macaroni dancing to the macarena!), some cool games, and, of course, Microsoft Works.

We had internet access, but I never knew the password for the dial-up connection so I never used it. Software was the main reason I ever used the computer.

Whiz forwards 10 years, and people don’t use software as much as they used to. We use internet browsers, maybe a mail client and an office package – and I’m pretty sure that’s all most people ever open. Because we don’t need to. Everything we need now is on the internet, downloading and installing software is a hassle… and then there’s the threat of viruses!

Now why’s this such a big issue? Well it’s not really, but I’ve just started my A-level computing project at school and we have to build a program using Visual Basic. I was sitting down and thinking about what I could actually build which would be useful to somebody and I found it extremely difficult. Every time I thought of an idea, I had to remind myself that it would involve some sort of connection to the internet. That’s fine, but it often defeats the object of the program.

Programs now seem so pointless, because all these services are now available on the cloud – even Microsoft Office! But we are heavily dependent on the internet when using computers. If I don’t have an internet connection at my computer, I stop using my computer, because there’s not much else I can really do!

So when I think back to Windows 95, and the maze screensaver, or Comix Zone, or making random publications because I didn’t have anything else to do… it seems a shame that everything we do is in the same window – we haven’t built software which interacts very well with web services which means that the software is often quite pointless in today’s very connected world.

Syncing the world

With every new bit of technology released in the world, the world is becoming much more connected. This is great! There is, however, a minor issue with all of this. Keeping everything in sync.

I am a regular Facebook user. I like to keep up to date with what my friends are doing, who is commenting on my photos, wall and so on. For this reason, Facebook sends me emails alerting me when things happen. This is great, it keeps me informed.

But what about when I’m not at my laptop? I get SMS updates to my phone. I have also downloaded Facebook Notifications for my Macbook.

What’s the problem? I get notified several times about the same action. I get a text, an email and a little notification. I also get a notification on Facebook itself. I don’t need to be told 4 times about 1 little thing that’s going on. I think we need a system which keeps everything in sync. If I’m out of the house, it sends me the text, and not the other notifications. If I’m at my computer it sends me a Facebook notification. If I’m not at my computer then it sends me an email.

Now this isn’t a problem I have with Facebook, it is the same with all websites. And with the current infrastructure, it is very difficult to do any different. Email is a very old system – it has been around years before I was born! SMS messages adopt a very similar structure to emails, and this is okay, but it doesn’t utilize the available modern technologies in a way which makes people’s lives easier!

Open Graph Protocol

Facebook have recently launched their Open Graph protocol. It is designed to connect websites to people’s social graph via Facebook more easily.

I was recently implementing it on my website, NewHaze, and I found it surprisingly easy to use. It is a completely different concept to the older model. But I think it is an improvement. It is much lighter and a much more logical approach to accessing the data available.

I am, however, concerned about what data exactly I will be able to access from my website. I was thinking that if somebody doesn’t permit me from access certain information, would the code on my site work? It’s just a small concern, and I’m sure it will be fine!

I also love the new authorization screen, it’s much cleaner and nicer to look at… and only one screen rather than having to be redirected from page to page in order to grant loads of permissions!

In all, I am a pretty big fan of the new protocol, it all seems to be working pretty well!