Internet Explorer 8 and thoughts on web browsers

The browser wars are here again. With Firefox 3 just around the corner, Flock rolling out version 1.2 just weeks ago, Opera letting the world know 9.5 is "coming soon" and Safari...well, let's just say they are "in the running"; Microsoft's announcement earlier this week that Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 will come in August seems to indicate that the time has come yet again for the browser wars to ignite again. This time though, the audience has changed and the focus along with it.



In the last round, security issues took centre-stage and underdog Firefox scored big against Microsoft's Internet Explorer thanks to this.

This round, we're looking at kids who've grown up on the internet, are immersed in the new-fangled web 2.0 world and want, above anything, a powerful browser that puts all their favourite social networking tools at their fingertips.

Witness Flock, social web browser extraodinaire, whose key selling point is the built-in interfaces it has for social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, MySpace etc. Undoubtedly, Flock should be the winner, right? Err... no, not in my opinion. My brief test of Flock quickly showed me how having too many features and too much integration can be problematic in itself - the direct result being a cluttered interface.

So when I heard of the Microsoft announcement, I thought to myself "it's probably time to check out what the folks at MS have up their collective sleeves." And off I went to download my copy of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1.

Thoughts on IE8

Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 comes with two shiny new toys that more tightly integrate Web 2.0 activities into the browser. The first of these, which I happen to like very much is Web Slices. Essentially, a Web Slice is like a graphically enhanced RSS feed, or a frequently updated portion of a page, cleverly coded, so you can preview that portion of that page without actually surfing to said page.



So, for example, the above picture shows a small 'slice' of the StumbleUpon homepage (the 'internet buzz' section) without having you to surf over to StumbleUpon to check out what has recently been 'stumbled'. Quite intuitive. You could also cut a 'slice' of your Facebook homepage and have it update you on your friends' latest updates.

The second key feature is what Microsoft calls Activities. What it really means is "stuff you can do from the right click menu." Okay, so actually this feature isn't really new and you can already do many things off a right-click with the appropriate plugins in FireFox and / or Flock. And to be honest, most of the couple of Activites in Microsoft's current line-up are just boring stuff tied to their services which no one uses (Blog on Spaces anyone?) There are useful ones, like "Share link via Facebook", which lets you instantly share the page you're on by posting it up on your Facebook page.



But still, I applaud the inclusion of functionality like Activities into Internet Explorer 8 simply because it validates the shifting of the web towards iteration 2.0. It validates what all of Microsoft's competitors have been doing. Who are we kidding? Internet Explorer will probably still be the web browser the majority of people will use because it's the one they find installed on their PCs. And by integrating Web 2.0 functionality into IE8, soon web-behaviour will shift towards the Web 2.0 dream the geeks and geekettes have been having.

Future of the browser

It's clear that the new frontier for war on the browser front will be waged on how well web-browsers can integrate Web 2.0 functionality. Each combatant manages this differently. Firefox gives you very base functionality, but has a fantastic plug-in system that let's you customise almost indefiitely. IE8's slices and activities show's some innovative thinking from the software giant. Flock tells me too much of a good thing can be bad.

What people will soon have to consider though is how much more heavy these browsers will be thanks to this new functionalities. I've heard horror stories of FireFox 3, and even the latest release candidate 2 is considered bloatware by many. To the uninitiated, this simply means that your computer slows down every time you open up an internet browser. The more it slows down, the "heavier" your browser is.

Secondly, most of these "social" browsers will collect private and personal information about you and insist that it's stored on your computer. Of course, you have the option of keying in all the passwords to your GMail, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, MSNLive, and Yahoo! accounts again if you like. But I suspect not very many people would. The danger in this is obvious, as we pander for the convenience having a socially-integrated web browser brings, we put ourselves at the risk of having much of our security information stolen. Sure, it's already happening now with saved passwords and cookies, but imagine a single browser piecing together your multiple identities on the web and then having all that data stolen? Even more dangerous, how about passing your laptop to a colleague to use and when he / she pops open the browser, he / she gets greeted by some very private Facebook messages?

Thirdly, with the rise of mobile devices, more and more emphasis will be placed on the "content" of the site and not the webpage itself. Sure, the browser will be relevant for a long time coming, but what about those mobile devices that basically let you browse what you want on the web without having to actually browse? For example, my client Nokia, has been developing some pretty cool S60 apps like Share Online which allows you to check out and comment on your own or your contacts Flickr photos without actually logging onto Flickr through a browser. Or Twibble, which I use as my main means of staying connected to Twitter without actually browsing over to Twitter. In fact, a lot of the integration of Web 2.0 functionality straight into the browser actually helps you get around actually "browsing" the page.

Just some thoughts to think about as we move into the next wave of Internetting. :)

What? You mean what I'm consuming isn't mainstream (media)?

There was a bit of interesting banter on Episode 139 of This Week in Tech revolving journalists who do shows on the internet (like on TWIT or Cnet or Tech TV in the old days) jumping over to "mainstream" media to make it big.

But would folks like Veronica Belmont necessarily need to get a job as a CNN anchor to make it big? I thought CNet and Revision 3 was as big as they come!

Though this has been discussed much, it still struck me that these were the shows I am listening to or watching more and more of, to the detriment of the more "mainstream" TV3 or newspapers. An oxymoron perhaps? Or is "mainstream" changing?

Not too long ago, it was widely considered by marketers that your average working class adult would consume media on a daily basis at routine intervals. The morning paper. 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. prime time TV. The breakfast show on the way to work. Sticking an ad into any of these slots would cost more simply because the stats show more viewers were consuming media at these time-slots.

Personally, for me, this has changed. Yes, I still read the papers every morning (to keep up with current trends, for job's-sake) but that's about it. I hardly watch TV anymore. Instead, my morning drives to work are dominated by catching up with the latest tech news, miniature gaming news or world news via podcasts. When i'm bored, I surf the internet with RSSed links to sites like Soccernet. More and more, I'm building an echo chamber of the news that I'm interested in and filtering out everything else.

I wonder how many people out there are like me? I'm guessing few, but growing.

Here's why:

1. Content Syndication technology (RSS)
Thanks to RSS, content delivery can now be automated, giving rise tonew forms of media like podcasting (sticking an Audio file to an RSS feed) that give people access to timely information that can be consumed at their own time. It's like choosing the channels you want to watch, and then watching them at your own time. The bad thing is, you'll be limiting yourself only to the type of news you want to hear.

2. More personal media players and multifunction devices.
All the best content in the world isn't going to do you much good if you're going to be stuck at home on the computer to consume it. The good thing is, more and more people are now carrying portable devices that are capable of playing media. It could be your phone, your MP3 player, your PDA. The option is now there for you to sync your favourite RSS-delivered content and consume it wherever you are.

3. Mobile internet getting better and better.
People a long time ago predicted the death of the newspaper thanks to the internet. As it turned out, those predictions were unfounded mainly because people didn't want to be stuck at home reading the newspaper on their computers. They rather prefer to read it in their toilets.

However, if you take my two points above and mesh it with the fact that now you can get a decent 3G / WiFi connection in the toilet and your mobile phone / device is most likely with you. Heh. You can easily see how a small device can replace that paper you used to hold in the toilet.

So, how much do you consume "mainstream" media?

Twitter makes the world go round - literally

Here's a riddle: what's got funny, colourful cartoon avatars and spins around and around, is tilted at an angle of 23.44 degrees and spouts speech bubbles that aren't chronologically coherent?

Give up?


Surf over to www.twittearth.com and check it out. Found this courtesy of my colleague Rony. Basically, it's a location sensitive Twitter visualisation that let's you see other twitters from all over the world. Yes, it's just eye candy, but somehow, I feel it adds an additional dimension to the plain ol' text of Twitter.

Oh, and if you've longed for a fancy screensaver, there's a download on twittearth that lets you use it as a screensaver. Walk away long enough and tweets from around the world will keep that globe rotating and your screen 'saved'. The only problem is, install it and you might just be inclined to keep walking away from your PC when you're supposed to be doing work.

All my posts are belong to me

There was a mini debate last week discussing blogging ethics following coverage in the Star over the PRCA Malaysia forum last week. Here's my personal viewpoint on the issues raised that have attracted more than a little discussion.

But before I proceed, I'd like to just remind everyone it's just this - a debate. There's no definitive guide to blogger ethics yet published, though I tribute Ed Bott's post on the topic as instrumental to helping me form my own views and approach - especially when relating public relations to bloggers.



Advertorial / Editorial

I was having a discussion with a blogger just last weekened about the issue of placing advertorials in blogs. Like any convention that's inherited from the institutionalised media, the concept of 'advertorial' has a rich history and many, many decades of refinement to reach the state it is today. Still, most print publications will still have varying interpretations as to what constitutes an 'advertorial'.

To save myself space (and not turn this into a lengthy article), I'm going to suggest you read the Wikipedia entry on this if you want to get the long explanation. I'm just going to borrow a couple of excerpts:

An advertorial is an advertisement written in the form of an objective opinion editorial, and presented in a printed publication — usually designed to look like a legitimate and independent news story.

Most publications will not accept advertisements that look exactly like stories from the newspaper or magazine they are appearing in. The differences may be subtle, and disclaimers—such as the word "advertisement"—may or may not appear. Sometimes euphemisms describing the advertorial as a "special promotional feature" or the like is used.

Many newspapers and magazines will assign staff writers or freelancers to write advertorials, usually without a byline credit. A major difference between regular editorial and advertorial is that clients usually have content approval of advertorials, a luxury usually not provided with regular editorial.

I'm going to summarise it this way: advertorials look exactly like editorial pieces except for one point: control over the editorial content is given over to the advertiser in exchange for payment. The advertiser gets to dictate what is said and the words used, and in return, the publication gets fair payment. With this in mind, most (but importantly, not all) publications insert the label 'advertorial', 'special feature' or 'promotion' with paid advertorials being published.

What about bloggers?

My personal conviction is that if I'm going to hand over editorial control of a certain article to an advertiser, I will mark that article as an advertorial. If I was pitched a review and given free rein to write whatever I want, then, even though I'm writing about a product, it won't be labeled advertorial. It really comes down to who has the control over how the article is written.

The case for credibility

Of course, the reason why many publications would place the label 'Advertorial' on an advertorial is to safeguard their credibility.

Back in journalism school, I was taught that the single most important value a journalist needs to adhere to is independence. My lecturer used to say: people read newspapers to get the truth - the unbiased truth.

Naturally, if newspapers or any printed publication start passing off paid-for advertorials as independently generated editorial content, the expected scenario is for that newspaper to lose credibility and readers. Why? Because those readers purchased the newspaper or magazine expecting to read the journalists unbiased report or opinion.

In the same scheme, tabloids don't get the same scrutiny broadsheets do simply because their expectations of independent reporting, source-confirmations etc. are set much lower than the daily broadsheets.

So how does this translate into the blogosphere (or the web 2.0 at large)?

Your own voice, your own space

I believe that credibility is still an important currency in the online world. But, in a peer-to-peer communication world where any consumer can communicate, credibility is going to mean a thousand-and-one things to a thousand-and-one different people.

Take a walk down the world-wide-web. We have on one hand, the institutionalised media - The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal - and they are the bastions of credibility. People expect to be given an unbiased view when they surf over to www.wsj.com.

On another hand, you have topic / product / brand-specific blogs where you can surely expect reporting to mirror to the disposition of the writers. I'll just reference two here: www.thenokiablog.com and http://www.applefanboyz.com/.

Then on your third hand (what? no third hand?), you have personal blogs or social blogs where the bloggers freely express their own views and opinions, unfettered. I think I'll just reference mine. (ed: on second thought, I think I'll just stick Ee May's blog here too.

The point is: all these blogs have a good amount of readers (except mine) but not all of them follow the same conventions of 'credibility' outlined above. Does this mean credibility is no longer consequential?

The short answer is no, it still is. The long answer is that it really depends who you are and what you're blogging about. I know bloggers who couldn't care less whether people think they are credible and I know some who'd pull an article if credibility was suspect.

What's important to you as a blogger becomes measured and balanced against what's important to your readers. If disclosure is a personal conviction for you, like me, then great. But if you have a different set of views and disclosure is really secondary, then that's great too. In the end, readers will read what they want from sources they trust.

Bloggers, on the other hand, will have the freedom to write what they want, disclose as they see fit, and basically own their own posts. Of course, the law of the land applies, and what's illegal offline is surely illegal online. But what I'm saying here is that each blogger as an individual will continue defining his / her own code-of-conduct. Some of these may be close to how journalists would act. Some of these may not.

But in the end: the key message is, all my posts are belong to me.

Creative: Fixed drivers, broken PR

A post on Wired yesterday brought to public attention a story on Creative Labs (Creative) that had been simmering for about a month on PC Audio enthusiasts forums. Interestingly, it also highlighted for a PR person like me the dynamics of technology PR in the connected age.

First, a summary of the issue:

• The launch of Windows Vista saw many Creative soundcards (and some high-end recent models) having capabilities "reduced" due to driver issues. Creative didn't fix all the issues leaving its customers with essentially worse sound quality from its products than if they had just stuck to on-board audio.
  
• Enter Daniel Kawakami (known as Daniel_K on modder forums), who in his own free time, takes the Creative drivers and modifies them to enable most of the features (like Dolby Surround) for Windows Vista. Many people download his drivers. Daniel_K starts asking for donations.
  
• Creative decides to crack down on this via a post on its own public forum and deleting Daniel_K's post. The main points for the "cease-and-desist" post are that Daniel_K shouldn't be soliciting donations to "profit" from Creative's IP and that he shouldn't be re-packaging the software for use with products it was not originally intended to. The original post was subsequently deleted thanks to public outcry, but can still be found here. Granted, the language seemed carefully thought-out and I think the reaction was a bit harsh on what was essentially a measured response.
  
• This led to Daniel_K's response. He also raises some valid points about the Creative approach which he calls "threatening me on a public forum", "removed everything I posted on the forum" etc. etc.
• Creative apologises and removes Phil O' Shaughnessy's post, with a much friendlier tone from moderator Dale (whom board members have come to love and respect.)
  

Okay, you can probably add up a lot more detail to my summary, but what I'm really interested in pointing out is the way the PR game has changed especially with digitally-connected audiences.

When I first read O' Shaughnessy's response, I found it really acceptable (and forgive me for examining the dude's grammar), I thought it was measured and concise. However, putting it up on a public forum is akin to the old media tactic of faxing statements like this out to every news media there is. And it smacked of arrogance to Daniel_K, and not just Daniel_K, but the rest of the loyal Creative modding community.

Observation#1: Don't talk to customers the same way you'd talk to the media.

I wonder if Creative could have used friendly moderator Dale as the official mouthpiece for this right from the start - perhaps having Dale private message Daniel_K about Creative's concerns. Why Dale? Simple. Dale's built traction, trust and credibility with forum-goers throughout his tenure over at the Creative boards. If you compare his message to Phil's you can see how the difference in tone of voice (from corporate swinger to friendly neighbourhood mod) makes all the difference in how the community talks to you.

Customers like to be addressed personally, by a friend if possible. A mass statement makes you sound like a distant corporation out to make money. A personal contact point through personal communication means gets you closer to the customer's real issues.

Observation #2: Customers talk back - in a BIG way!

Uh, yeah, obviously. Customers have always been talking back to companies - whether it's the silent protest of boycotting products or giving earfuls to customer service reps. But they have perhaps never been as easily mobilised or united as the customers on the internet today.

What this means is companies need to be prepared to have a conversation. And there is no "I win, you lose" outcome. If that's the goal, then the company has already lost. There has to be genuine consideration for the points and issues raised by the customers and not blissful ignorance that they exist.

As a Creative customer (yes I am! Dave's laughing.), I would have loved to get all the nice extras I plonked RM 400 for with my soundcard. Otherwise, I would have saved that RM 400 and stuck to my on-board sound. If that's my issue, how can Creative solve that? Maybe...uh... just leave Daniel_K's mods alone? Wouldn't people actually buy more Creative soundcards now that it would actually work better in Vista?

Observation#3: What's posted on the internet, stays on the internet.

I was having a discussion with Dave on this and we both agreed its practically useless trying to control information on the internet when you've published it (posted on a forum, blog etc.). Why? At the very least, search engines would have indexed your page and kept a cached copy of it. And that's if no one else has copied your content and posted it on his site lock stock and barrel (like how I retrieved Mr. O' Shaughnessy's statement).

Yes, there might be a small window of opportunity to delete offending posts before they get indexed, but we're talking about the 2 - 3 hour window before the feedback starts pouring in.

Lesson? Think very,very carefully before you put what you want to say online. You can't take it back.

That's it, just three short points. Personally, I'm hoping Creative gets back on its feet and that this will spark a series of initiatives to win back the modding community. Full functionality of old products on Vista is surely a good thing for the customers, and in the long run, the company.

Human-powered search?

Nearly a decade ago, Google brought innovation to the words "internet search" by using pigeons to sort out good search results from the bad ones.

Fast-forward to this decade, and pigeons have evolved to human beings. Enter human-powered search by Mahalo. Though I've known about Mahalo for a while now (thanks to Buzz Out Loud and Jason Calacanis appearing on TWIT every so often!), I've only recently begun to actually start using it, and I'm quite, quite loving it.




Let me start by saying, Mahalo isn't Google. Yes, they are both search services, but Google's a bit more "engine" and Mahalo is a bit more "service."

You see, Mahalo actually pays human beings to write up search entries, and still relies on aggregating search engine results from Google, Yahoo!, del.icio.us and more to give you results for any searches they don't have entries for.

So, say, if you were searching for "Barack Obama" you'd end up with a great looking page full of links, video and information on Mr. Obama like this:



But let's say you were looking for a lesser known somebody, oh say... davidlian... you'd just get a bunch of google links like this:



Of course, if i was a bit hardsell, I could put in a request for Mahalo to write an article about my search topic. This is a bit of interesting interaction that I really found to be unique about Mahalo. Teams of real people would be putting together pages for specific topics and so it ends up becoming a little bit of a cross between Wikipedia and Google. And, if you wanted to be one of those people, its pretty easy to sign up here and get paid.

If you just wanted to get casually involved with the search community at Mahalo, you could alternatively sign up as a member and volunteer links. Each search page entry gives you the option to volunteer links that are relevant to the topic and will be vetted through by Mahalo's team to ensure a better search result for everyone.

I still use Google an awful lot (though I'm more and more going back to Yahoo! now), but Mahalo is also one of the great sites I check out on a daily basis to see the pulse of the internet. The front page changes everyday and though it's a far cry from the minimalistic design of Google, Mahalo manages to deliver important topics on its front page without the clutter of sites like Yahoo!.

More interestingly, I love how Mahalo tries to be more than just a search engine. Stuff like the Mahalo Daily Show by Veronica Belmont means there'll always be meaningful content to discover on Mahalo.

The only drawback is, I can't get over how everytime I punch in David Lian, this dude called David Binn keeps popping up.

Free Books? Neil Gaiman and Harper Collins says so...

I'm a huge fan of Neil Gaiman, simply love his dark mix of mythology and reality.

Just yesterday, Mr. Gaiman and his publisher Harper-Collins just announced the availabilty of one of his classics - American Gods - for free reading on the Harper-Collins website. Apparently, this is going to be some sort of experiment to see if people who take to reading full whole books online would buy an actual hard-cover or paperback.



I think this is a fantastic idea because the most unnerving thing about purchasing books online is you never really get to know the content of the book, especially if you can't find that same book in bookstores. Preview pages are great, but sometimes, I want to just browse through the entire thing before I buy.

By putting full books online for reading / browsing, publishers are effectively translating the whole in-bookstore browsing experience online. It'll be just like walking into a brick and mortar bookstore, picking up a book you'll potentially buy, and reading the first couple of chapters before actually buying the book.

Naturally, there's a fear that people will just read the entire book online, but in my humble experience, there's nothing quite like holding a real book in your hand. Besides, book piracy is already rampant on the internet and you can easily find best-sellers on any 'pirate' torrent sites out there, so I doubt putting full books online for free is going to dampen sales at all. In fact, it may encourage it.

Kudos to Harper Collins and Mr. Gaiman for this move. Amazon, what are you waiting for? Enough with crummy first chapters already!

When virtual and real collide...

There was a story recently on the BBC news about scientists who predict that computers the size of blood-cells will be here by 2033 leading to "fully immersive virtual realities." Lead inventor Ray Kurzweil predicted "Virtual will compete with reality."

That, Mr. Kurzweil, is already happening in Malaysia. Check out Jeff Ooi's post:

On Page A14 of Guang Ming Daily (Feb 27, evening edition), my opponent whipped all bloggers in a broad sweep by stating that "bloggers hide behind computers and live in a virtual world".

I laughed out loud at this comment.

There are more people than just bloggers who "live in a virtual world." Today, virtual is real.

Many, many, many, people live in the immersive virtual world of emails, websites, blogs and forum. You talk to people you don't know IRL (in real life) who have funny names like "CyborgBoy" or "Haxxergurl." You chat with colleagues from halfway across the world whom you've never met except on Instant Messaging and email.

You make use of this virtual world to share, communicate, transmit, discuss and interact. But you know that this virtual world is just a conduit, because unless you fancy talking to a bot, these are still real people you are interacting with.

The reason why social networks like Facebook and MySpace are so popular is in fact, because you are really connecting and making friends with real, breathing, living people.

Sure, there are bloggers or virtual personalities who prefer to remain anonymous, but there are just as many who prefer to merge their real-world identity with their online presence. Jeff Ooi is a prime example - his mobile number is listed on his blog for goodness sake. I wouldn't call that hiding.

The truth of the matter is, especially for the industry I work in, the virtual and the real are colliding. We don't need to wait for another 25 years and for micro-computers to be injected into our blood. Identities are unifying.

Remember the first time you signed up for a Hotmail account? Then your first Geocities account? If you're like me, you used different sign-in names. In stark contrast, people are now using the same identity again and again online - I'm davidlian on most sites and forums I participate in - and with more and more relevance to their original identities.

Movements like the OpenID initiative are going to unify our identities even more creating a stronger association with our "real-world" alter egoes. You going to need to be authentic online as much as you're authentic offline.

That's what I'd want my MP to be.

EDIT* Nigelsia had a great pic to illustrate this post, stolen shamelessly off someone's Flickr:

Social Networks shrinking - what are people using them for anyway?

Just a little while ago, the cross-section of the technology and marketing world was abuzz (and probably still is) with the idea of social networking and the possibilities to reach consumers in new ways with products and services.



The first chinks in the armour are starting to appear. Yesterday, the Guardian published a story citing Nielsen figures on a decline of 5% in UK Facebook users. Similarly, MySpace also saw a 5% drop.

Now, 5% doesn't seem to be too much but if you put it against the context of all the furore that's been going on around Facebook applications, forced invites and the (belated) measures Facebook are taking to respond, the message is starkingly clear - it's time for social networks to clean up their act, literally.

People don't want to receive spam from hundreds of different applications just because they have a couple of hundred friends who have vastly different interests and perhaps a few shared ones.

Facebook was appealing because it could let friends connect in groups of shared interests of play games they both had an interest in playing. It started to get painful when there were too many friends each trying to "recruit" you into playing their game. (I get about 12 vampire bites a day).

So, the final word in Social Networking (at least for now) seems to be "Niche." Personally, I think Facebook has the potential to be precisely that by allowing people of similar interests (Groups) to connect with one another whilst making it simple to ignore and clear the clutter of the myriad of other stuff that doesn't interest them.

I've asked a couple of friends about what they do on Facebook and while initially Vampires and Zombies were all the rage, the excitement has died down and it's become a really practical communication tool for these people. For most of them, it's about sharing pictures, posting comments, dropping personal messages and being a part of a group with similar interests. And of course, the odd app or two should still be there.

Niche doesn't have to mean a social network that's just built around one purpose (look at the very successful LinkedIn). Instead, I think it's going to mean more and more the sort of flexible network that will let you carve your own space and find your own niche without having to drown in mass messaging.

Facebook's clean up act could mean just that.

Just installed: Firefox Beta 3

I'm a sucker for Beta software. Just can't resist installing the latest and (unready?) versions of software I use. So I went ahead and installed FireFox 3 Beta 3 yesterday. and it looks like this:



First impressions: Visually, there doesn't seem to be much difference in the way FireFox 3 looks and feels compared to FireFox 2. That said, FireFox has always looked fine. What's more important is that Beta 3 seems stable and hasn't crashed on me yet even though I had like seventeen different windows and tabs open!



Function-wise, I like some of the new 'smart' functions FireFox 3 incorporates (thus far, there may be more):

Smart Bookmarks



Auto-bookmarking isn't really a new feature - FireFox 2 had it and virtually every browser built since the Netscape era has a handy tool called 'History' that'll let you re-visit your previously visited pages. Smart Bookmarking takes this a step further, letting your auto-bookmarks be organised by the "most visited pages" and even tags. Tags works just like online social bookmarking services like del.icio.us, but allows you to attach tags to your bookmarks offline so you can easily search for previously bookmarked resources on any given topic. Real useful for doing research!

Revised Download feature



The biggest improvement for me here is the inclusion of a search function to help you locate those pesky files you've downloaded from the internet. If you do a lot of downloading, and have trouble finding files after that, this is just the right tonic for you.

These are the two major functions, for now that make FireFox 3 look like an evolutionary internet browser as opposed to a revolutionary one. Personally, I had hoped for more Web 2.0 functionality (incorporating OpenID?) like Flock but, I guess you could argue that just as much could be done with the extensions supported by FireFox.

Malaysia's very own Internet Elections portal

So, what sort of change does the Internet bring to elections? Would it affect Malaysia? We'll know in a couple of weeks, I guess.

There was a really good article from ReadWriteWeb I read that characterised how the Internet would change the nature of electoral campaigning and allow candidates to get closer, more directly engaged, with their audiences. Case in point:

• Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the other US candidates all have Facebook profiles & groups.
• YouTube partnered CNN to host presidential debates on its Video Service.
• At least Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton have blogs. Many more campaign workers have blogs.

But that's not all. Just run a Yahoo! search and you'll find countless forums, blogs and sites that support discussion and debate on the US Elections.

Well, the good news is, us Malaysians aren't too far behind. Beyond the political bloggers / watchers in our country, I'd like to point out that leading Bahasa Melayu daily Harian Metro has launched its own elections site entitled, aptly, "PilihanRaya 2008."


Harian Metro's Pilihan Raya 2008 site.

What really surprises me with this site is the functionality built in. You can not only get the latest news and information for the General Elections, but also vote in the on-going poll, or add your own comment.


Comments are on the left side of the screen.

I cannot stress how important a factor it is to allow people to comment. What's an election if we don't allow people to debate? The simple ability to comment makes this platform more than just a web-site. It'd be interesting to see the discussions (and... uh... moderation?) that'll go on on the site.

This is pretty ground-breaking stuff, especially coming from an established newspaper. I'm personally wondering if we'll see a similar site from NST the next couple of days to cover off the English-speaking audience.

Meanwhile, kudos to Harian Metro and its online team. Exciting stuff.

You Tube Videocracy: The event no press were invited to

... which made them want in even more.

Funny play on the human psyche this - we want the things we can't get even more, but to go cover a press event? Granted it was an excellent event by an excellent brand and some key announcements were made. Some journo even tried to sneak in and was promptly thrown out.

Well, the news didn't stay quiet for more than 24 hours thanks to Ian Schafer who promptly posted his notes up on his blog.

Personally, it wasn't so much the news that excited me (what's active sharing anyway?) but the manner in which YouTube pulled this event of. It's got me thinking, if we organised a big event here in Malaysia, and "neglected" to invite the press, but made sure we invited loads of industry people (marketing folks, handphone dealers etc.), would that make it even more desireable for press to drop by and cover it.

Something tells me it won't. Ah... the mysteries of life.

Here's a quick video I found of what the event looked like:

Bill Gates quits Facebook, should you too?

Just a couple of months after splashing US$ 240 million on Facebook shares, Bill Gates has decided to abandon his personal Facebook account.

The reason? 8,000 friend requests a day and no way to bulk accept, set "limited profile" and "Skip this step" all of them at one go. If you take (internet connection speed-permitting) 10 seconds to add one friend, Bill'll spend nearly a day (22.22 hours) just to accept those 8,000 friends. And there's plenty more where that came from, you can be sure.

We've probably come to a cross-roads, then, as far as social networking is concerned. With MSNBC reporting Myspace users are spending 14% less time on the social network this month, it seems social networks as we know it now need a drastic re-design to keep people on them.

I'm sure some interface re-designing will help, but I also think we're ready for the next big social network after Friendster, MySpace and Facebook have all had their day.

I'm wishing Social Network 3.0 will be an open platform that's seamless across all my devices (meaning PDA, mobile device, desktop and laptop). Something that's a bit of Microsoft Outlook mashed up with Faceb