Last week I made the annual pilgrimage to Brighton for dConstruct - one of the UK’s leading grass-roots Web conferences. Now in its fourth year, the theme of the conference this time was “Designing the social Web”, a topic increasingly of relevance to what we do at IOP Publishing. “Social Software” is merely software that gets better the more people use it; it’s not necessarily about creating the next Facebook or MySpace, and many (though not all) sites could benefit from social features. Read more...

Today I got embroiled in a debate with Pete and Brian on Twitter about the term Web 2.0 and its increasing meaninglessness. This was only a few days after jumping on an old school friend’s use of the term, citing ReadWriteWeb’s …There is only the Web_is_no_web_30_there_is_no_web_20.php. I recall Phil saying I was “all about the 2.0”. And I still am, in that I think the New Web needs to be about real community if you’re going to profess that your site is a Community Website. Read more...

[This was a slightly incoherent ramble which I haven’t had time to tidy up. I blame the anaesthetic (for the incoherence) and Life in General (for the lack of time)] My lower 8s (bottom wisdom teeth to non-dentists) have been trouble since they first started coming through in 1999 - the gum pockets got infected before the teeth had even emerged, so I had to have a trip to the emergency dentist (in Melksham, as I recall) and some antibiotics. Read more...

As I write this, I’m trying (and failing) to load twitter.com/home. Oh - it just timed out. According to Is Twitter Down? it’s not down, but I can’t get to it. There have been no updates on my timeline for two hours now, which is quite rare for a working day. I just wonder whether Twitter has reached a natural end. You know “it was fun while it lasted” sort of thing. Read more...

Pearl Beadle, my Mum, passed away peacefully yesterday morning, April 2nd 2008. She was surrounded by the love of her family during the last week. Many of the family were at her bedside when she left this life at 9.40 am. What can I say? Her passing came as no shock, given the events of the past ten days. Mum suffered a second stroke on Easter Monday, this time affecting the left side of her brain. Read more...

BT, Virgin and Talktalk broker deal with Phorm.com.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, who intercept internet traffic, set anonymous cookies and deliver targeted ads… There are lots of comments on this Guardian article_might_call_it_resistance_95_say_theyll_opt_out_of_isps_datasharing_deal.html, including this one from martinusher: bq. I had a quick look at this system today on a technical website and it appears that the system effectively routes all your web traffic through a proxy server which records your browsing habits (and, while its about it, obscures your browsing habits from anyone else downstream from it). Read more...

I’m rather enamoured of OpenID, the really neat, decentralised way to log in to any OpenID-supporting web site with one username/password. Simultaneously, I’ve had a Vox account since I was invited to try the beta pre-launch. It was moderately interesting as a community-based approach to blogging, but as I already have this blog I never used it for that purpose. At some point (I forget when), Vox became an OpenID provider. Read more...

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/62/196222499_82457835d9_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/cokeeorg/196222499/ Renault Scenic Originally uploaded by CokeeOrg Our Christmas trip to Basingstoke (hello, glamorous life!) took place before Abigail arrived; nonetheless, the sheer amount of stuff we took with us and brought back (presents, kids’ toys etc.) rather emphasised how small our little Honda Jazz.aspx?model=291 is. Its small size but generous interior space is one of the reasons we bought it in the first place and its boot is one of the largest in its class, but now we have two kids we’re starting to consider upsizing to a larger car. Read more...