Webonaut

Conservative Ed Vaisey has announced that he wants the UK to filter Porn by default - either with a Chinese style country-wide wall, or by encouraging ISPs to do so. Nobly he is including the provision to then allow people to call up their ISPs and have it turned off for them. It's an interesting idea, and you can see why this is a great thing for kids accessing the Internet, but - and it's quite a big but - it won't be easy to do. Why? We filter out child-porn don't we? Isn't this just an extension? Well... no. Here's why. There is a grand consensus between all major ISPs and - crucially - web-sites that child-porn is a freedom-of-speech bridge too far. But the same is NOT true of mainstream porn. In order to block it, you would therefore have to block Flickr, Google, MySpace and a whole host of other pillars of the web-world. Without them also agreeing, you would be looking at such a crippled net that the majority would simply opt to have it switched off, ...

I'm not a big fan of Microsoft or Facebook, but I am hugely impressed by Gate's Philanthropy - as it is making a real difference. His example is now being followed by Mark Zuckerberg amongst others in giving away at least half of their great wealth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/billionaires-giving-pledge-wealth You could argue that this is simply the most exclusive vanity badge in existence (which it is), but regardless of their reasons for doing it - that does not stop the fact that what they are doing is great. Massage their egos with the full list here: http://givingpledge.org/#enter

If you look at the speed with which Wikileaks is trending (go on - open up Echofon or any other Twitter client and search for wikileaks) it's ASTONISHING. Faster than the royal wedding did immediately after announcement a couple weeks back. What's more, it's almost ENTIRELY in support of what Wikileaks are doing - and disgust at how they are being attacked by governments who supposedly enshrine free speech (or free speech about OTHER people perhaps) Scarily, not only have Amazon, PayPal and American Express bowed to government pressure (and - after all - WL have not actually done anything illegal) but Twitter are NOT trending this. Now - go back to Echofon and try searching on what Twitter say is actually trending, for example #jedwardreply - notice any difference is speed of tweeting? TWITTER - THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE

The meaning of life? It's easy*: 1) a means of passive income 2) longevity research to have a breakthrough with regenerative health 3) permanent subscription to OnLive + monster broadband (*If you're a selfish hedonist with no responsibilities and a trust fund)

My music now comes largely from Spotify, my games from Steam or OnLive, my movies from NetFlix - Cloud services are taking over... I cannot envisage a future other than where any entertainment form is available anywhere... games, music, video... in car, on my mobile (OnLive player for iOS anyone? Latest console games on my iPad?), on my profile, inside other games / virtual worlds / social media v2 lives 5 Implications of The Move To The Cloud: 1. Consoles: will eventually die out 2. Game shops: will go the way of Video shops (see Blockbuster now filing for bankruptcy... "Game" will follow in a few years) 3. Convergence: of Social Media with games/music/film. Web-plugins for OnLive - or whichever service supercedes it - make the next installation of Call Of Duty embedded into your Facebook page - with hooks into your friends & Social Media 4. Apple Pwn: Expect to see Apple finally crack the missing "serious games" component with a buy out of OnLive - or ...

News from Japan of their smart vending machines gaining - if not quite self-awareness - awareness of others is interesting for a couple reasons. Firstly, being able to identify customers age / gender is COOL and CLEVER, with obvious applications for targetted advertising / shifting more soft-drinks... but it's clear where we're going here: IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE - More automated machines instead of humans - (BAD THING IMO for everything except for shareholder returns) - Even more of those devil-bitch-speaking-auto-tills (that supermarkets so love and customers hate) - The spread of til machine equivalents to everywhere else human-costs can be "saved" - Bank Tellers, Argos, etc LONGER TERM - Social Networking / online identity integration How this final point functions is yet to be determined, but the technology will have OAuth as a forebear. Not sure how these points will identify you yet (the successors of rfID tags/Oyster?), but once it has (and you've given ...

Norwich web-developers Klik appear to have what looks like an HTML5 active logo! It's pretty swish actually - check it out www.klikhome.co.uk It's this sort of thing that makes Flash seem unnecessary - particularly with it's iPad / iPhone friendliness.