Sometimes, I’ll spot an upcoming Internet fad and think, “Pah! That’ll never catch on!” Like Facebook. Who’d have thought you could make a success of a web site where you replicate your real life relationships online, throw a few people you’ve barely heard of into the social equation and then proceed to poke and zombie bite them until they sever all ties with you in frustration? Not me, that’s for sure.

Other times, people will proclaim something the next big thing and I’ll believe them. Generally, because my judgement is on a par with a drunken Lord Longford’s, this shiny new thing will be good for a while before collapsing under its own awesomeness or sinking into obscurity. Twitter recently suffered this fate outside of North America (and, er, India).

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a service where you sign up, enter your mobile number, get your chums to join you so you have someone to suffer your incessant babbling, and then sit back and watch the updates pour into your mobile phone.

The problem: SMS isn’t free, is it? Twitter have to pay like everyone else, don’t they? Well yes, they do, and that’s why Twitter have recently switched off the text message service outside of North America (and, er, India). The fledgling bridge between your online and real life has become a glorified - and really limited - Facebook wall.

The “fail whale” appears whenever Twitter’s web site breaks. I think it’s appropriate here.

Other Epic Failures

While we’re here, why don’t we have a look at some other online services whose business models will doom them to a life of epic fail, no matter how much venture capital cash can be mashed into them:

1. Gravatar. It’s a glorified image hosting service. Oh sure, it’s an invaluable service for this brave new Web 2.0 world where anybody is literally nobody without their own blog, and what’s a blog without comments and what are comments without avatars and how else can you make your avatar appear everywhere on the web without your mate Gravatar? However, no matter what its intentions, it’s a site you visit once; it then serves up your image file to unconnected web sites forever more. A glorified image hosting service, just one without much opportunity to serve up glorious money-spinning adverts.
2. Any Google competitor. Seriously. Why bother? And finally…
3. Youtube. Try to come up with the worst moneyspinning Internet idea ever, and you still couldn’t do better (worse) than Youtube. To come close, your idea would have to be not only amazingly bandwidth-intensive to serve up video content to ungrateful cretins, but also CPU-intensive to convert all their own videos into streaming Flash format. You’d need to licence every video codec under the sun. You’d need oodles of storage. You’d need your own personal Gestapo to stamp on any dodgy material and keep the copyright lawyers off your back. And to top it all off, you’d have to have your entire user base specially imported from some kind of retard colony.

All right, so the last example is something of an aberration. But the other examples? They are doomed.

Google Maps may be an excellent service, providing easily the best and most flexible online maps of the UK, but after extended use by someone who doesn’t like to drive - say, me - it begins to reveal a dark heart, the end result of its upbringing in a land where the car is king.

Yes, Google Maps is evidently designed for (and by) fat pies who refuse to step out of their SUVs until they’re inches away from their destination - Americans. Quite possibly Americans like the young couple who once told me in hushed tones, on a train but without a hint of irony, that public transport in California “isn’t for people like us“.

Despite the fact that Google Maps diligently records all known nasty one-way systems, and routes its directions accordingly - with no way of telling it to stop it because you’re on foot - it somehow omits that most basic of locations, the humble train station. No, you can’t find train stations on Google Maps, either by looking or by specifically searching. Instead, for unfamiliar towns and cities, you either have to trust that most major train stations can generally be found on “Station Road” or perhaps “Station Approach”, or look up their location somewhere else and make a mental note.

This is rendered even more bizarre by the fact that Google Maps actually include railway lines, albeit represented in the same way as the rather less uncrossable tram lines, leaving the location of the stations themselves as the only mystery.

All this, of course, means little more than the opportunity to put my limited artistic skills to good use when I have to print a map, or send one to someone else. Trying to remember where stations are when sending directions to friends probably helps keep my brain active, too! In the end, in a twisted kind of way, Google Maps are doing me a favour. Probably.

So yesterday there was a classic Internet furore as AOL publicly released a pile of search data from users of their search engine. Anonymised, mind you, but that’s not quite the right word. When I think of something being ‘anonymised’, I think of dodgy electronic voices. Interviewees in impenetrable silhouette. Details changed to protect the innocent. The whole shebang.

What AOL mean here is that they didn’t attach the name and address of each user directly. Very good of them - but they still gave each user a unique ID number.

And tagged each of their search queries with a date and time.

What this means is that anyone can quite easily track the search history of user #3, and - if they happen to have insider access to any of the sites user #3 found through the AOL search, say a government site or one owned by any of the big media companies - crosscheck AOL’s data with their own web server logs to lift the veil of anonimity. Oh dear.

You don’t even have to be that big a site to score a victim. So congratulations, Case Study User X - you stumbled upon a site for which I have the logs.

Huz? Stalker more like. Thanks Ryan.

The guy - and, judging by his search history, I’m assuming it’s a bloke - is from Texas. He came to the site but didn’t stay. The bastard.

Probably because it doesn’t contain many pictures of actresses. He likes searching for info on actresses, you see. And paparazzi pictures of them. And sometimes, he can’t help but wonder where they live.

Nothing too bad there, I suppose. Harmless enough. At the beginning of his search oddysey with AOL, he was looking for ‘free puppies’. By the end, his search had moved on to the subject of puppy food. Is this a touching tale of dreams fulfilled?

Probably. Unfortunately, not many dreams are likely to be fulfilled by people having their search history posted for the world to see. My stalking victim was relatively innocuous, searching mainly on mundane topics that any one of thousands of people could have. The fact that he was looking for careers with a specific company, evidently owned a particular model of printer and had a poor credit rating - but wanted a loan - might help to pin him down more precisely, but not without a lot of educated guesswork.

It’s highly likely that for dozens, if not hundreds, of people represented in the 2.1GB of raw search data, the effects of someone who knew them trawling through the data would be much more damaging. Even a quick perusal of the first 65,000 records revealed some woman - evidently a woman - with an unhealthy interest in post-natal depression and ‘infanticide’, and a few less savoury examples.

The sad thing is that without the inclusion of unique user IDs - and the associated loss of privacy for those concerned - the data becomes much less interesting for research purposes. It simply becomes a collection of words, without context. As it stands, the AOL data is intruiging; it represents something akin to a stream of consciousness as ordinary people interact with the Internet, revealing more about themselves to the ether than they might reveal to their friends.

It’s a bit of a scary thought how much of ourselves is likely to exist in Google’s vaults, really.

Remember kids: Big Brother might not be watching you right now, but he’s probably saving everything you do until later. And if you’re not careful, he’ll release it all in an ill-advised and incredibly naive philanthropic gesture.

Something funny happened to me on the Interweb today. Funny strange, not funny ha ha. To understand what it was, you’ll need a cursory understanding of P2P - but let’s face it, you’re here reading this site, so it’s more than likely that you do.

After a largely unsuccessful evening scouring the Internet for fast torrents - of Linux ISOs, cake recipes and other non-illegal things, natch - I thought I’d struck gold. I’d happened across one that sped off at ridiculous speeds immediately, just the sort of torrent I’d been hoping to meet all my life.

But wait! It turned out that my torrent had some horrible skeletons in the closet. I was about to click µTorrent’s “peers” tab to peek inside, and cover myself in human remains.

This is what fell out all over me:

You’ll notice that the IPs listed are all very similar - in the 38.100.xxx.xxx range, mostly, with three outliers which are also very similar. The vital statistics of each peer are different, but the client is the same in each case.

What’s that all about? Is someone, as Ryan suggests, trying to “law me up”? Or feed me with a horrifically corrupted file which I will spit out in disgust, eventually leading to lifelong Bittorrent bulimia? Or something else?

Answers on a postcard, please.

No, no it doesn’t. Talking smileys are, in fact, very annoying and adverts about them, which shout “Hello!” at you when you mistakenly hover over the banner, are just one of the reasons why I usually browse with Flash disabled.

Thankfully, with Windows XP SP2, Microsoft made it easy to disable Flash in Internet Exploder. Here’s how!
1) Go to Tools > Manage Add-Ons
2) Choose “Shockwave Flash Object” from the list.
3) Click the Disable button.
4) Click OK.

And like magic, the blight of Flash will be gone from your browsing experience. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse to re-enable it when you actually want to use Flash - in other words, when you visit YouTube - but it’s infinitely better than having a profusion of badly-made pulsating banner ads flickering in your face.

If you’re using Firefox, avoiding an epileptic fit has never been easier. Simply install the FlashBlock extension and every Flash applet will be replaced with a placeholder. If you actually want to be subjected to the horrors within (or you’re on YouTube), all you need to do is click the placeholder and the Flash will play as normal.

If you’re anything like me you’ll find yourself wondering the oddest things in unguarded moments. A recurring train of thought has me musing what delights were on TV the day I was born.

Thanks to the excellent archivists at the BBC and their crack team of “BBC 2.0″ geeks (who must sadly suffer the worst label ever created), now I know. You can too.

So what did I miss as a day-old baby? I missed a Tomorrow’s World item on an exciting new hydraulic cutter that would go on to be known as the “jaws of life”. I missed convicted paedophile Jonathan King making an appearance on Top of the Pops. I missed kinky old Frank Bough telling us about the good value of new cars on Breakfast Time.

Most devastating of all, I missed the first and only BBC1 showing of one of the worst Doctor Who episodes ever recorded.

Find out everything you ever wanted to know about BBC programmes, and stalk your favourite BBC stars across thousands of meticulously cross-referenced items, on the Infax catalogue.

It may be 3am, but today is my one-year anniversary of signing up to Audioscrobbler, now better known as Last.FM. What has it taught me?

It’s taught me that apparently I like Pink Floyd, quite a bit. And Roger Waters. I can understand the Floyd - I rarely listen to a single track, so every time I listen to them I rack up a whole album’s worth of play-time - but Roger Waters?

All right, so Amused to Death is good - relatively speaking, and we’re talking relative to The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking here - but did I listen to it on a constant loop for a few days? And then blank the incident from my memory?

It’s scaring me, man.

What else has it taught me? That I am the world’s biggest fan of Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto. Apparently. Oh dear.

Note: I know for a fact that the above is not true, and not just because I don’t even like that album too much.

I am also suitably embarrassed that ABBA are ranked higher on my Top Artists list than, say… well, everyone past position #15.

Embarrassing revelations aside, Last.FM is a fantastic service and great fun to have a poke around. Sign up if you haven’t already - a voyage of dubious discovery awaits you.

Oh, and if you want to laugh at the whole of my profile, feel free.

There’s a new episode of Consolevania out, and what a scorcher! In every way possible.

You see, this particular episode is Consolevania XXX, focusing on the best the games industry has to offer “adults”. Judging by the fact that the likes of GTA San Andreas were seen by some to herald a new age of maturity in gaming, you can see where this is going.

Fortunately, only one of the games featured tries to be anything other than decent, honest-to-God porn. There’s terrible-looking adventure game Lula 3D, some porn version of the classic CU Amiga giveaway Bally 3, and the motherlode: Hentai 3D.

I’ve never seen the point in hentai, so excuse me while I find the idea of a game based around it to be hilarious and not titillating in the least. The concept is simple: you get some computer-generated Japanese ladies thrown onto your screen, you make small talk with them - er, if that’s what you call dialogue choices including “hey you little bitch”, or something along those lines.

And then you dress them up and insert things in them.

The most impressive part? There’s even a tentacle scenario. And the saddest thing? It’s graphically very nice. I did have a screenshot here, but it’s been lost in the mists of time and the vagaries of the Internet - just as well, really.

Hentai 3D. Get a demo here, if you’re a freak.

Hmm. I want to get my unwarranted Just Adventure bashing out of the way as soon as possible, so I’d better come up with something new to write about.

Erm. How about a link? Everyone loves links.

For programmers (or those aspiring to be one), have a look at The Daily WTF. It’s a daily compenium of hilariously bad code from “professionals”, who we presume are actually paid to write it. The site actually makes a handy learning tool - figure out what’s so horribly wrong with the code displayed, and reward yourself with a good laugh when you work it out. Oh, and it’ll probably make you feel smug and eminently employable, too.

Today’s target for my bile and rage is Just Adventure+, a rather smaller site than last week’s Slashdot, but no less deserving of a good cussing.

Follow that link and you’ll feel like you’ve been smacked in the face with a horrible design unchanged since approximately 1989, mostly because that’s what will have just happened. I can overlook that - looks aren’t everything - but what’s this tagline? “The largest and most-visited adventure site on the Internet”? I don’t know what they base that on, but even a cursory comparison of the membership and posting figures displayed on their forums and those of their less shit competitors will disprove that. Dubious claims aren’t cool!

On to the primary purpose of any good gaming site, the reviews. They exist to tell you what’s hot and what’s not. Unfortunately, what’s not hot on Just Adventure+ is, apparently, Monkey Island 2, considered by everyone except them to be one of the high water marks of the genre. There are two reviews on JA+, and the highest mark is a B-. What’s that mean according to their review guide? It’s “a superior game”, but “lacking either the innovation or perfection required for a grade of ‘A’”. Hmmm.

That should be enough by itself, but hey! This is a rant! Let’s take one more of their reviews, this time with reference to a review I trust more from vastly superior site Adventure Gamers. The game: Hauntings of Mystery Manor.

Have a look at that review from Adventure Gamers. Looks a pretty lame game, doesn’t it? The sort of game someone could (and indeed, did) knock up in Adventure Game Studio by themselves? Yes. AG’s score of 1.5 stars (out of 5) looks entirely justified. Now let’s have a look at Just Adventure’s version.

“Nothing short of remarkable” it says. “Final grade: A” it says. That makes it “one of the best games available”, and it “should be on the shelf of every adventure gamer”, according to the grading system guide. Tally-Ho, when you wrote this review, did you have a crush? Are you the author’s mum? Why weren’t you edited into oblivion?

Again, as with Slashdot, it’s not so much the concept of the site I mind. Everyone is free to create their own little corner of the Web - I should know that. It’s the fact that JA+ loves to tout itself as the biggest and (by implication) best adventure gaming web site in existence, when it’s clearly rubbish, that rubs me up the wrong way. If a single person arrives at JA+ and think it’s representative of adventure gamers as a whole - basically undiscerning idiots who will welcome bad games as the second coming because they are “produced and published by ONE PERSON![!!!!]” - then JA+ has done everyone a great disservice.

Phew, that rant was a long time in coming. More cussings-in soon!