Column Archive
Only network electronically
By Michael Parsons
Social networking is one of the building blocks of the Web 2.0 dream: bringing together like-minded people online to create a community of interest that can share knowledge, information and resources and make useful contacts. However, we must not forget its older, fleshly incarnation -- the real networking event, if only as a cautionary tale
Never trust a webbed politician
By Michael Parsons
Watching politicians getting excited about technology is always an embarrassing experience. The manifest insincerity of their attempts to pull on geekish robes is physically painful to anyone who knows what's really going on. Yet it can be hard to resist when such powerful people pay flattering attention to the techies. It's hard, but I think I can resist the blandishments of Webcameron...
Swedish flirts find a new home
By Michael Parsons
Flirting is the rocket-fuel which drives much of the interest in online social-networking sites. Today one of Sweden's largest flirt-driven social-networking sites, Playahead, is going to offer its members access to the rapidly growing online virtual world of Second Life, turning its members into avatars that can hold hands, kiss and blow raspberries at each other in virtual space. Strange, I know, but it all makes perfect sense…
Beware the industry of cool
By Michael Parsons
Do you have an iPod yet? There are certain painful issues of identity and crisis bound up in the whole business of music. There's a painful line in Cameron Crowe's excellent film about rock and roll, Almost Famous, in which legendary rock journalist Lester Bangs, the film's spiritual guru, talks about the death of authenticity in music. He sees it all going to hell and the music he loves becoming simply, "an industry of cool". Having waded through the knee-deep slurry of the latest Apple launch, this chilling phrase takes on a terrible and convincing force. What colour iPod nano are you going to buy?
Google's word processor does the write thing
By Michael Parsons
This week I got the chance to check out Writely, the online word-processing application that was purchased by Google earlier this year. It's one of those ideas that either seems daft or makes intuitive sense, depending on your current working habits. If you write on a laptop -- or with a quill pen -- and rarely go online, it will seem rather silly. I sit in front of a Web browser on a high-speed connection most of the time, and I already rely on a host of network-dependent applications to get work done: if the network goes down, we all go for coffee
Chatting in the third dimension
By Michael Parsons
I still associate instant messaging with flirting, and idle chat, but it's now a business tool I use everyday. Yet it's social enough to include avatars, cute little pictures of your virtual self that display during your IM session. My Yahoo Messenger avatar wears a suit and a tie, as befits my sombre work persona, but you can choose any body, hair, eyes, or clothes you desire. These avatars wink a bit, or frown, but don't do much else. They're not exactly alive. Elsewhere on the Web, like at IMVU.com, that's changing.
Taking your television for a drive
By Michael Parsons
The older I get, the more I loathe and detest television, and after two or three drinks I have moments of clarity when it's clear that all the ills of our sick, sick time can be blamed on this wicked invention. In order to loathe and detest it with style and insight, however, I find it necessary to keep up with the latest ways in which the great Satan enters our lives, such as Telewest's new TV Drive, which I've been trying out. So pass the remote. And the crisps. And be quiet, this is a good bit.
What do bloggers want?
By Michael Parsons
With British bloggers threatening to claim what's left of John Prescott's scalp, this may be a good time to work out what these blogger types really want. John Battelle, founder of the blogging ad network Federated Media, thinks he knows. In part, of course, they want to be famous, but more importantly they want to quit the day job and blog full time. His company aims to make this happen by taking the rising stars of the blogosphere and tricking out their Web sites with the kind of blue-chip advertisers who would normally be lavishing their ad spend on more traditional Web sites, such as this one. The good news for bloggers is that it just might work. The bad news is that it still takes a long time to be an overnight success…
Living in a fantasy world
By Michael Parsons
I'm a big fan of Michael Crichton's daft 1970s science-fiction movie Westworld, in which Yul Brynner stole the show as a sinister robot cowboy gone bad. He terrorises the residents of a high-tech entertainment resort, which included a variety of themed spaces: the cowboy-themed world of the title, a medieval world and a Roman world. I thought of this when I heard that Roma Victor, an online world set in 180 AD, is set to throw opens its virtual doors on 16 July...
Bringing it all back home
By Michael Parsons
How big is your bill for digital services at home? If you add up things like satellite or cable television, landline telephony, mobile phones and broadband, it starts to become quite a big slice of your domestic budget. Suddenly we're all chief technology officers, managing a small IT division from our sofa. Now that we've got the gig, how are we going to make it easier?
from Dell
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