Why sites won’t always be cool

The internet evolves incredibly quickly as new sites and technology are developed. It is a completely different place from what it was ten years ago and about one thing remains true: we still use Google to search for everything. Social media has only started to appear in the last seven years or so (that makes me feel old…) and we are forever seeing new sites popping – there were over 200 million new top level domains registered last year alone.

The problem is that a site won’t always be cool forever if it isn’t essential. Search firms really need to just give up and realize that they don’t stand a chance against Google because for 99.9% of the people I know the search engine is Google and Google is the search engine. Nobody uses anything else. Google will probably just continue to be there whilst the internet is around. But what of Facebook and Twitter?

I’ve seen a significant shift recently in what my friends use. Sixth months ago a couple of my friends had used Twitter to follow a few people that they had seen on YouTube. As of the last couple of days almost half the people I know have it and are using it more than Facebook. I over heard somebody (that I don’t know) saying this morning that he ‘had spent all of last night on Twitter because it was so much better than Facebook because it ain’t* as full of crap’. It is a shift that started a couple of weeks ago and it has suddenly just swapped over.

Perhaps the main reason is that Facebook is aging. The people at Facebook at aging and the way people use it is changing. This happens with all sites – people want to use them in a way that is not offered by the site and so the site gradually starts to die. I am not suggesting that Facebook will die, but I think that it is perfectly possible that it might.

*He means isn’t.

Will Anonymous really take down Facebook on November 5th?

Anonymous (the hacking group that merged with LulzSec – man I miss them) said a while back that they were going to hack Facebook on November 5th because it figures out quite nicely with Guy Fawkes trying to blow up the British Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot. It turns out Anonymous liked this bit of history quite a lot so they wear masks based on V for Vendetta.

November 5th is almost upon us and no new news has cropped up about Facebook getting hacked. The internet seems to have forgotten, which is a shame because it could still happen and I would have thought that the only reason Anonymous made the announcement was because they knew that they could do it – though this announcement has been since taken down.

If Facebook does get hacked or infiltrated I would have thought that Mark Zuckerburg would have the sense to take it offline whilst they fix the bug – and even if Anonymous didn’t get in they still would have taken Facebook down. All of Facebook’s data is backed up and personal data is encrypted so it is very unlikely that any of your details (or pictures of cats or whatever rubbish you’ve put on Facebook) are going to get leaked.

Anonymous may not actually announce the attack again, so just to be safe it is probably worth changing your password on Sunday, though you should change it regularly anyway frankly*.

*I say this having not changed my Gmail password for the last year and a half…

Website of the day: keyhero.com

I’m not the biggest fan of typing tests. In the past I’ve always come up with relatively bad results with poor accuracy rates, but I have finally found a website that seems to like me a little more than others: keyhero.com. The site is based on Flash (sadly) and works just like any other typing test site – you type in quotes and it tells you when you make mistakes. I currently have an average speed of about 75 words per minute and an accuracy rate of 95% – which almost puts me in the top 2000 on the site of around 20000 users.

Even if you don’t type quickly the site is still relatively good for practicing – it has a special practice mode where your score isn’t recorded. I’ve found that the site has improved my speed by a whole word a minute over the last week but I don’t think that I’ve improved on my accuracy, it has always (and always will be) bad.

I know that this probably isn’t the best website out there but it is certainly worth a look.

Coming this week: DumbCMS

This week (not sure when) I will upload the code to a new CMS that I have coded called DumbCMS on Google Code. The idea behind the project is to use a really simple system that allows people to quickly create websites. It will be fully modifiable through an Admin system where administrators will be able to edit pages, post blog updates and upload files.

http://code.google.com/p/dumbcms/