2004

I think we all remember this time. It was in 2004 when everyone started writing a blog. YouTube became famous, flickr spread and everyone started publishing content. Wasn’t it a great time? You finally were able to see kittens doing funny stuff. Hilarious.

2006

Let’s be honest. 2006. Year of Twitter. No discussion. Since 2006 you know when your friends and strangers go to the toilet.

Twitter changed everything. You got live updates from events you were interested in but couldn’t participate, news sites were nearly useless since everything was on Twitter if you followed the right people.

I think Twitter is one of the sites that had the biggest impact on me.

EMails

I think it was around 2006 when I stopped writing EMails. You could reach everyone using ICQ, Jabber and other IM services. It was fast. It was web 2.0. You could do that before. My ICQ accout was created 2001 I think. But as always it took some years till the last non tech people adopted the “new stuff”.

Most of my friends went to school or university. They always had time to check IMs and they always had a Internet connection at home or university. So it worked out fine.

2008

Facebook or “when your private data started to spread around the net without you knowing it“. Wasn’t it great. You could present yourself to all your friends. And even people you didn’t know became your friends. A girl I met once at a party – 3 years ago – added me as friend so I could see her full contact details, photos and everything about her life.

I mean we met 3 years ago. That means something, doesn’t it?

My opinion about Facebook

Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with your friends and people you know. But you should really be careful with your private data.

Sometimes I don’t understand people. They publish interests, photos and other stuff on a platform that is supposed to make profit and they are surprised that they use their informations.

If you really have a problem with Facebook and care about your informations so much: Don’t publish them! No one forces you to enter every last detail about you. No one forces you to play Farmville. No one forces you to click those “get a larger ***** in 3 hours” links.

If you are too dumb to take responsibility for your actions and informations you published stop using the web.

Please don’t get me wrong. I know that there are many older people that just don’t see the big picture because they lack background knowledge. This was just a wake up call to those who know the web but use services blindly and start crying if something goes wrong.

IM

It was 2008 when I stopped using IM. It was easier to send my friends a message on Facebook. They could check it from everywhere and they could instantly reply.

IM just didn’t work anymore since we all left school. We started working, earning money, having less time to sit in front of a computer and click every link on Google to look if there is something on the Internet we didn’t already see. We grew up and we don’t work in professions allowing us to use the computer the whole day.

Time in front of  your computer

I believe that there are actually two camps of people.

1. Those who work in front of a computer all day and can run every software they want as long as they get their job done
2. Those who don’t or cannot.

I believe that instant messaging as a communication replacement is only viable for camp one. IM using your mobile phone was never great. No matter what phone we talk about.

IRC and bulletin boards

Did you notice that IRC and bulletin boards are dead? Well at least kind of? Back in 2008 it was when most tech discussion was moved from BBS and IRC to blogs and wikis. Of course there are developer channels and BBS but looking at how they are used is nothing compared to 2000 – 2008.

Mailling lists, blogs and wikis just have one big advantage. You can always look back at a discussion. It is persistent.

Last time I checked some IRC channels I liked – channels with many competent people – I nearly started crying. Back in 2006 someone asking how to install Linux 9.1 would have been kicked and discussion went on. Today the same people became Ubuntu users. Explaining everything, solving nothing being boring and not innovative. A discussion about a Perl script? “lol what’s perl? Use Flash.” “this doesn’t fit here anymore.” “who cares? did you see Lindsay Lohan last night?! Aweeeeeesooooommmmeeeeeeee”

Don’t get me started on bulletin boards. In 2004 you could already answer every second thread with “turn your monitor on“. It didn’t become better.

EMails

It was 2008 when I started writing EMails again. You know – they are great. You send someone a message and when the other person has some time he or she sends a reply. And so on. It’s like IM only that you don’t have to run strange clients and you don’t need to sign in different services.

Thanks to Push and IMAP it is instant and usable from everywhere. Great stuff right?

It was great

I had a lot of fun. Discovering new services like Plurk – seeing new services fail like Plurk – discovering new services that actually made it. Let’s be honest for one moment. Every geek, every hacker, every IT dude is a kid that likes to play with new shiny stuff. And we got a lot of it since 2004.

No matter what service I tried it was fun and I met a lot of great people. And that’s what web 2.0 is about right? Publishing stuff and meeting people.

There is one rule that – sadly – works: the more you publish the more people you’ll meet. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what you publish.

Participate

Look at what you have to stay in touch with people and how you can participate. Let’s take a ordinary iPhone. You always have the web with you.

• You can tweet form everywhere
• You can tell people where you are so they can break into your house
• You can upload photos from everywhere
• You can upload videos from everywhere
• You can instantly reply to comments on your news or updates on 14 services
• You can read news all the time with your feed reader

And that is only a small selection of stuff I did.

My problem with it is that I don’t feel to get something back. It is just a duty to update everything so people that “care” know what’s going on in my life.

If I am honest – I don’t care if everyone always knows what I am doing. My friends don’t need a instant update and pictures form my last trip. I can also just show them the pictures when we meet next time.

There is no point in using 2 or 3 sites like Facebook. One is enough to stay in touch with people – especially since I don’t care about most of them. I am in touch with those people I really like. I don’t need Facebook.

I don’t always have to know about the last news. It doesn’t matter if I read my news sites in the morning or all day. Informations like “Patch 3.3.5 is released” and “VirtualBox 3.2.0 is finally stable but you are not allowed to run OSX on Windows” are good to have. But it is not important to have them 3 minutes after they are published.

What will I use in future?

only a hand full services / sites

• Twitter. I like it. News I care about and updates from interesting people.
• Emails. They just work. I can write and answer them whenever and wherever I want.
• Blogs. Informations I care about. No matter if I publish them or someone else. And if I want to look something up it is there (most of the time)

What I wont use anymore?

• Flickr. I am not photographer. I have some pictures of birthdays, vacations and other stuff and I nearly never look at it. I sometimes search flickr for inspiration but that’s it.
• YouTube. See Flickr.
• Everything but Facebook.

Facebook is a special case. I am not sure if I continue using it. On the one hand I like it on the other hand it is meh.

iPhone?!

I have an iPhone. And without all that social stuff it is just a phone, a calendar, a address book, a Twitter client, a browser and a Battle.net authenticator.

I have a paper calendar – great stuff. Works always. No synchronization needed.

A phone? It has some great features. I have to admit it.

Twitter client? Runs on nearly every phone I’d consider buying (iPhone / BlackBerry / Nokia maybe an Android if I start drinking)

Browser? It was fun but I stopped browsing the web while on the road. I do it one or two times a month.

I currently have some trouble with T-Mobile (that’s another story). There are two options.

1. I need / want my iPhone <- I have to find an arrangement with them
2. I just buy another phone from a provider with cheaper contracts and service that also sucks <- I save money and have no disadvantage beside no iPhone

My decision to say goodbye to web 2.0 is maybe one of the most important factors to consider option two. Why should I pay a lot of money for a great device that I don’t use in a way that it justifies the price? Style? No thanks.

It was a great  time

but it is over. Farewell web 2.0. We had a lot of fun. We did awesome stuff. But everything has to come to an end.

Appendix: reading this article a second time I feel old. Sucks. I’m 23. I got a great job. Shouldn’t I be one of those pink polo wearing hipsters that are too cool for this world using everything they get from Apple because it has style, even if they have no idea what they are doing and publishing everything they have?

My point of view

I don’t like flash. I recently uninstalled the Flash plugin in my browser. After tweeting this I received some – let’s call them unfriendly – DMs that I have no idea what I’m talking about and that I should just shut up.

Let me give you a short version what I really think of Flash

IT JUST SUCKS

I said I’ll go with the short version. If you want more details read on, if you don’t care skip to the next headline.

Everything Flash does is consuming valuable system resources. I still work with my HP/Compaq NX7000. I have a Pentium M 1.5GHz, 2GB Ram and a Radeon 9200 mobile graphic chip. This notebook works for me. I can do all my work, I can surf the web, work on my projects and do everything else except browsing websites that use Flash.

Okay enough drama. I can, of course, browse pages that use Flash. But my CPU is running at 100%, my battery runs dry and my legs are warming up.

I have only seen one website I find at least a bit useful using Flash and that’s YouTube. Yes I know there is Vimeo and other sites that do exactly the same but let’s just stick with the big one. I can live without YouTube. Yeah, call me crazy but this is no joke. I am still not as 2.0 as I wanted to be and somehow I am thankful that I missed my goals. I don’t feel the pressure to publish new content, to take a vacation from Twitter or to run away from my blog.

Short version as conclusion

I don’t use Flash, I don’t like Flash, I don’t need Flash.

Maybe now some of you understand why I don’t care about iPhones and iPads without Flash.

Mac improvements are coming

You may ask why I write this post and that’s okay. I just hit word 346 and still did nothing beside flaming Flash. There is an article on AppleInsider and I just cannot resist writing a comment that wouldn’t fit in the comments on AppleInsider.

I won’t comment Jobs statement that Adobe is lazy. I know many things I’d call them, lazy is not included.

“If Flash stayed stagnant, it would certainly go away,” he said. “But it’s not going to stay stagnant. We’re going to keep innovating.”

Flash is innovative. Great joke. What’s the next one? Windows is the best OS for every task?

What can Flash do?

• act as a media player for sites like YouTube
• eat up a lot system resources
• crash
• security holes for free
• you can create advertisements using many sound files so you cannot surf the web without muting your speakers
• always require an update when you need fast access to your browser

Yeah Flash is innovative and China is a democracy.

Why did Flash become famous?

There is only one reason why Flash became famous. Well, maybe two, but number two is YouTube and I am sure they would have found another way to deliver videos.

Back in the dark days of the internet there was only one easy way to create interactive content. Flash. Everyone started using it, many people were not happy but there were no viable alternatives.

Some competitors appeared but they had no chance. Requiring additional addons, new development environments and a total new syntax without giving something back, no overvalue, is no way to attract developers.

Why Apple is doing it right

Apple is going for HTML5. With HTML5 there is no need for Flash if you want to provide videos for your users. And as I just said, this is the only reasons why we still see Flash on websites (okay maybe also because some people still didn’t get that Flash sucks and that there is no reason using it). Webdesigners understood that using standards is a good idea. And now they’ll get a alternative that will work on standard compliant browsers. What do you think they’ll do?

Many users are not happy about Apples decision. I can understand this. I don know what sites they are visiting but if they think they need Flash I can understand it.

But thinking about future Apple is doing it right. They don’t waste resources on a technology that should be dead for at least 5 years now. They work on a new technology that will bring benefits for everyone using it. They focus on standards that can be used by everyone.

That’s what I call innovative.

Source: AppleInsider

It looks like they are using OSX and not iPhone OS. And this is exactly why I would not be sure if it isn’t a hoax.

On Macworld is an article that explaining what key features a tablet needs.

works like a mac

I don’t believe it. I’ve never seen a desktop OS that is easy to use as tablet system without heavy modifications.

Modifying a system that works great or using a system that is already running with touch only input and adding some features. What do you thing is the easier job?

A full features OSX would have some advantages – let’s hope I am wrong and they didn’t take the easy path.