Chris Minnick is an author, trainer, web developer and co-founder of WatzThis? (www.watzthis.com).
He has authored and co-authored books and articles on a wide range of Internet-related topics. His published books include: JavaScript All-in-One For Dummies, Coding All-in-One For Dummies, Mastodon For Dummies, Beginning ReactJS Foundations, Adventures in Coding, JavaScript For Kids For Dummies, Coding with JavaScript For Dummies, Beginning HTML5 and CSS3 For Dummies, Webkit For Dummies, CIW eCommerce Certification Bible, and XHTML.
In addition to his role with WatzThis?, Chris is a winemaker, painter, novelist, swimmer, cook, and musician.
Web 3.0 has officially begun — the signs are all around us (here’s one, and here’s another).
I’m ready now to start revealing the details of what exactly will happen during this version and what future versions hold for us. For a first taste of Web 3.0 through Web 8.0, please visit WebEightPointOh.com now.
The stupidly named “Deleting Online Predators Act“, if it becomes law, would require institutions that get federal funding to prevent access to social networking sites except under adult supervision.
This isn’t what I meant when I said that Myspace should go away.
“DOPA” won’t do anything to “delete” online predators. Instead, it’s a twisted attempt to restrict innocent people’s freedom while purporting to protect them. Sound familiar?
If Myspace should be banned from schools for any reason, it’s because it’s owned by News Corp and is saturated with advertising. Banning it because it enables communication (which can sometimes be dangerous) is a bad idea that won’t do anything and could theoretically result in banning the Internet from schools.
Here’s the problem with blogging:
People who blog often sound like they’re obsessed with themselves (see my last post). The problem with that is that it’s normal to be obsessed with yourself (who else is going to be?), but sounding like you’re obsessed with yourself is frowned upon. So, there’s a conflict.
If you, as a blogger, want other people to read your blog (and become obsessed with you?), you need to try to write as if you’re not obsessed with yourself. At the same time, you need to not sound like a moron (because that turns people off too), and hopefully you have something interesting to say that isn’t totally about yourself (but, most of us don’t have interesting things to say very often).
According to leading experts in blogger psycology, the moment when all this blogger inner turmoil shit hits the fan, Web 4.0 will officially be launched. Stay tuned.
Oh, and I also wanted to mention that I think we saw the beginning of the end of MySpace last weekend with all their problems keeping the servers running during the heat wave. Our 14-year old friend was very annoyed by it.
Here’s something that’s been irritating me: ever since I discovered that a colleague/client of mine has a blog dedicated to making him the #1 search result for his name on Google, I’ve started to worry about how I’m not the #1 search result for “Chris Minnick”. To add insult to injury, the #1 result is completely devoid of content.
I’m shallow, I know. But, now I’m obsessed. 23 of the first 25 results are me….why can’t I just have one more?
Top 5 things I wish I could forget:
1. The songs from West Side Story
2. actually, I think that’s pretty much it. Just #1.
A few things I think need to happen soon:
1. Google needs to be taken down several notches. Not that I have anything against google, it’s just that I think too many people see them as the end-all-be-all of companies, technology, and search and too many people in the media and in blog-land have the hots for Sergey and Larry.
2. MySpace needs to go away.
3. Everyone who makes web sites needs to check out the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and either start using these or create and posting their own patterns somewhere.
I’m obsessed with YouTube and Google Video.
When I was in high school and college, I had a video camera and shot hundreds of hours of tape (which I’m starting to go through and digitize now). Watching this footage today, I realize that I never learned to edit, or cared much about editing, and that’s why most of the videos I made in highschool and college are unbearable to anyone but me.
I watch the videos that kids are making now and posting to YouTube, and many of them spend a lot of time editing and produce much more polished things than I ever did. They do have much better equipment than I had in the late 80s and early 90s, it’s true. But, I think they also see the potential of editing, even if they rarely get it right. I think that’s cool. What’s even cooler is that they have a way to get their videos out there so that I can watch them.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Internet?
For the last few days, I was on sort of mountain retreat (it wasn’t really that glamorous), during which I listened to a LOT of podcasts and a lot of audio books and audio book summaries.
One of the most interesting and entertaining things I listened to was Bruce Sterling’s presentation from one of those goofy O’Reilly conferences.
Some of you may be aware of my nascent efforts to ridicule the Web 2.0 hype while provoking some actual thought about what the future of the Web might look like. Bruce Sterling expresses very well some of what irritates me so much about “Web 2.0” and also quotes extensively from an interview with Alan Liu, author of The Laws of Cool, who is highly critical of “Web 2.0” as a way to describe the current state of the Web. This is all great stuff.
Another main topic of Bruce’s keynote was the idea of “The Internet of Things” — the term he uses to describe a future time when physical objects are tied into the Internet. The standard example used to explain the benefits of this is “imagine using google to find your shoes in the morning”. Bruce says that he thinks it will take 30 years for the “Internet of Things” to truly arrive. I disagree. I predict that it will take 1/3 as long. I suspect that even my estimate is too pessimistic, though. I also predict that it won’t be google that people are using, but something much better.