MySpace - BAD! Facebook - better? We'll see.

I make no efforts to hide the fact that I think MySpace is a skidmark in the underpants of web 2.0 and more or less represents everything that is wrong with the internet today. I loathe MySpace basically.

Most of my ill thoughts towards MySpace is because of the way they let people bombard their pages with all manner of crap making most of the pages on the site completely unviewable unless you wanna risk an epileptic episode of grand proportions. I agree that people having bad taste and no judgment is not the fault of MySpace, I already knew that people are idiots way before MySpace got into the game, but the core of the matter is that MySpace is the enabler here. There are tons of other communities that look really neat and that don't make my brain's synapses lapse into a screaming rage when I visit them.

The only thing that I actually enjoy with MySpace, and that I repeatedly curse for being a feature of said website and not some other site less worthy of my hatred, is what it's done for underground music. It's awesome to be able to go on there and listen to and occasionally download songs with less known bands worthy of greater fame. This is, as I see it, MySpace's only feature worth any praise and the only reason that I don't want it completely wiped off the internet.

Sure, it's probably nice that MySpace helps people keep in touch and stuff like that, but that's hardly anything new as far as online-communities go. I've been active on various communities on and off during the past ten years but none of them have even come close to being the cesspool of bad taste and animated GIFs gone wild that is MySpace. This is why I would rather choose almost any other community out there over MySpace.

I actually had a MySpace-account once, but I closed it down after a few months because I just couldn't live with being a part of it. That's how bad I think it is.

It was brought to my attention today through an article on TechCrunch that MySpace are apparently not only enablers of crap but also testy bastards that enjoy shutting down companies that supply services linked to the MySpace-site, i.e. companies that add value to their business without it costing them anything except some bandwidth and CPU-time.

In this web 2.0 day and age I think this is pretty appalling and it's just another reason to steer clear of MySpace. Sure, they're looking into opening up their platform to developers, something that Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and a myriad of other web 2.0 sites have already done aeons ago, but even if they do they're pretty late to the dance and with them having behaved badly towards third party developers already I'm guessing that such a venture could be actually be a failure.

I have very little experience with up and comer Facebook, practically none actually. But although I've told several of my friends that have wanted me to get on there that I'm not interested in another generic online community, I'm actually now thinking about setting up an account. This is partly to check out what all the fuss is about but mainly to play around with the site and its API. Yeah, I know that's a really dorky reason but hey, that's what I am - a dork.

Plus, Facebook doesn't give the members the right to soil their pages with a multi-colored vomit of Flash, animated GIFs and movie-clips. At least, that's what I hear, and if I do set up an account that's what will determine if I stay more than a few minutes or log off immediately and delete my account while screaming profanities at the top of lungs.

Bullshit by any other name is still...

So Microsoft has decided to pull the plug on the much despised FUD-campaign "Get the facts". In it's place it has erected a new site called "Windows Server compare".

As far as I can see this new site serves the exact same purpose, i.e. to throw dung on Linux, it's just a new name for the same old crap. Completely ridiculous and pointless in other words.

How hard is it to understand that bullshit and lies are just that no matter what you call them?

It is particularly interesting how they seem to come down extra hard on Red Hat, with them being one of the major Linux-distributors that have refused to sign a patent-protection agreement with the devil (unlike Novell and Linspire, for example). "So Red Hat doesn't wanna play with us? Then let's behave like babies and make a site that makes them look bad. Oh, and our dad is stronger than Red Hat's dad." Geez...

Microsoft needs to get a grip and concentrate on improving their deeply flawed software instead of embarking on new hate-campaigns against Linux. This is just plain embarrassing.

One shall stand, and one shall fall

I AM
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Off topic, but yummie!

OK, so this has nothing to do with computers or other tech-stuff but...

Damn, this is some awesome goodness!

Mustard, good! Wasabi, good! Wasabi-mustard, fucking awesome!

So now you know.

And just so you know my girlfriend is the greatest because she's the one that bought this for me!

This is how much of a dork I am

So we've been visiting my girlfriend's parents for a couple of days and this afternoon we were sitting in the kitchen chatting about this and that. It's a pretty hot and especially clammy day so I glance at the thermometer by the kitchen window to see how hot it actually is. When doing so I also notice the small text at the bottom of the thermometer's front and immediately this makes me think "wow, it would be so cool to have one of those".

The text reads "wireless thermometer"...

Now that's how big of a geek I am. All it takes is the word "wireless" to make me want something. I clearly need help.

iPhone hackers work for Apple

It's been widely reported about various progress in the hacking of the iPhone. A couple of days ago Engadget reported that apparently a hacker named "Nightwatch" has compiled and launched his very own application on the device.

In order to accomplish this feat "Nightwatch" has constructed an ARM/Mach-O toolchain that henceforth can be used by others to follow his example and consequently have third party native applications running on the iPhone instead of just Web 2.0 apps running in the Safari-browser.

Of course this is a positive breakthrough since developers and iPhone-owners have been screaming for an API and the possibility to develop and run real apps on the iPhone. But it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. As with all such things they are always broken sooner or later, it's just a matter of how long the apparatus can resist the efforts of it's hackers.

But most of all, I'm very sure this came as no real surprise to Apple. In fact, I'm positive they counted on this happening sooner rather than later, and they surely will reap the major benefits from it.

By releasing a device that's received more pre-release hype than anything I've ever seen before Apple has assured (almost at least) it's success and that it will sell millions of it. By then refusing to give third party developers access to an API or an SDK they've assured that the caffeine-crazed hackers of the world will do their best to break into the device and have it run third party software. Once there is a fairly stable way of developing apps for the iPhone, which shouldn't be far away now, a new market opens up which while not feeding money directly into Apple it does making their money-making product even more desirable. And they've done nothing themselves to make this happens except release the phone and withhold the API, all the real work the hackers have done for them. So basically, they've been working for Apple all along. They've just not gotten paid a dime for their hard and commendable work.

Another positive thing in this scenario, from Apple's point of view, is that as long as no official API or SDK has been released they don't have to deal with support and complaints regarding third party applications. It's not their fault if you installed and ran some app on your iPhone that made it go up in flames since it's not their toolchain that built that app and they certainly didn't license it.

So even if it looks like Apple 0 - Hackers 1, it's really the other way around if you think about it.

Twitterer and widget maker

The past couple of days I've been playing around with Twitter and it's API. It's pretty simple to use, hardly astrophysics or anything, and with the widget for Blogger looking like ass I decided to hack my own. And so I did.

The fruits of my labour are plainly visible to the right in this blog. It's nothing fancy, just some basic HTML, CSS and Javascript, but I think it looks pretty good. And if anybody gives a damn the code can be downloaded from here.

In the days ahead I'm gonna pleasure myself (oooh...) by writing a Twitter-applet for the Gnome desktop as well. Now don't misinterpret the sudden focus on Twitter. I don't think I'll ever be an avid twitterer (is that a word? probably not) and I'm not exactly falling head over heels with excitement over the thing. I just wanna play around with some free API:s, and for that purpose this one is as good as any. Also, anything that allows me to interact using the command line gets a "yay!" from me.

curl -u someaccount@somedomain.com:somepassword -d status=Posting+to+Twitter+using+curl+is+teh+shit%21 http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json