The history of the web is littered with unexpected patent claims that feel frivolous to nearly all. These are driven partly by a terrible system for reviewing and awarding patents and a litigious society that sustains a business model of lawsuits in the hopes that some will just pay.The latest…
This is somewhat old news now (it’s 5 days old — an eternity) but I think it bears mentioning. The URL shortener Vb.ly was shut down by the Libyan government when it seized control of the domain Vb.ly. The Libyan government runs Nic.ly, the registrar for all things Libyan. Nic.ly…
When Google changes its logo in honor of a holiday, someone’s birthday, or just for the heck of it, it sometimes gets some chatter. When Google created the Pac-Man logo, articles appeared of people trying to figure out how it worked, or commenting on tech support calls within organizations from…
In case you haven’t seen the Arcade Fire video, The Wilderness Downtown, you should take a look at it. Google and Arcade Fire got together to show off what Google Chrome could do with all the new gee whiz technology out there, and if you listen to all the major…
Wired Magazine released an article on its web site yesterday, The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet, that basically states that the web we’ve all grown to rely on for nearly twenty years is on its way out. There has been a lot of chatter about this over the…
I was out of the country when Steve Jobs posted his open letter on Flash to the Apple web site. Had I been around I would have dissected it. Today Adobe published its own open letter(s) about how great Flash is, why open markets are good, and even an ad…
If you are one of the millions of people using social media to report where you are, you may have been tuned in to all the buzz lately about the site Please Rob Me. The concept is very simple, when you use applications like Gowalla, Foursquare, Brighkite, Loopt or anything…
At the site Rebuilding the Web there is plenty of content questioning the current process and chaos around HTML5 and related specs. A piece that drew my attention echoes the dust-ups I have had over HTML5 (and XHTML2) and whether it’s a good idea to push it so hard when…
This article was originally posted on evolt.org, an online resource for web developers, maintained by web developers. I have granted evolt.org the right to use this article on their web site, and they are the only entity with the right to reproduce it. Anil Dash posted a story called Life…
There are many on the web who will recognize the name Derek Powazek. He is the name behind old-school sites such as Fray.com and Kvetch.com (which has apparently been taken over by spam bots) and wrote a book about communities (Design for Community, which mentions me by name, which is…
This article was originally posted on evolt.org, an online resource for web developers, maintained by web developers. I have granted evolt.org the right to use this article on their web site, and they are the only entity with the right to reproduce it. Yesterday Mashable.com posted an article titled “Psychologist:…
This article was originally posted on evolt.org, an online resource for web developers, maintained by web developers. I have granted evolt.org the right to use this article on their web site, and they are the only entity with the right to reproduce it. By now everyone has had the opportunity…