1. Past my third year of University
   This is quite easily the hardest thing have ever done. It took every part of me, every piece of fire in me to complete that degree. It was one of the best days of my life when I found my result.
2. Get a full time job
   As I have previously mention on this blog, I managed to get a job with MW kellogg. But I only ended up working there for a week, when I got another job with a web design company, called Xanda. It is my dream job and I love it.
3. Try to swear less.
   This is something that I didn’t achieve, be a mixture of stressful times or living in the port city of Portsmouth. But F*** it
4. Find a place for important object, such as keys and wallet.
   After moving home, I managed this. I still loose things, but isn’t that just life.
5. Make sure my phone is always charged and on me
   I did manage this one to, it was a matter of keeping a charger in the living room and bedroom, so I can charge my phone anywhere I am. I also got a AirCurve dock for my desk at work, which will charge my iPhone.
6. Write a free application, either online or for your computer or phone that will aid the general public
   I have written a plugin for jQuery to get posts from Twitter, but I am yet to test it correctly and publish it on my portfolio. This will be completed within the next month. I am currently in the process of writing a scripts section of the portfolio, where I will open source lots of stuff I have written to date.
7. Go on holiday
   This one was a lack of money from not having a job. I have had weekends away, going to Portsmouth for some reasons, but not a real holiday. It is on this year’s list.
8. Closely monitor the amount of time that I spend on computers
   As I now work on computers everyday, I spend even more time in front of computers than ever. I do notice that I am doing it and do try and get away from my computer for at least 5 minutes in every hour. I also check facebook on my phone, spending less time in front of a big screen. Is that better?
9. Use my time more efficiently
   This is something that I do feel an have achieved by completing all of the above and manage to get out to socialize. If anything, I think that I need to slow down and chill out more.
10. Try and go out for a date-night once every two weeks.
    If you know me personally, you will understand why I do not want to dwell on this one. I will admit that I didn’t achieve this, as I was busy with number 1. Something I regret deeply.
11. Make sure the people around me know how important they are to me!

For the most part I am extremely happy with the year. I got more done in one year, than I thought I ever could. The things I didn’t manage to do was only stopped by the fact I had to focus on getting a my degree/job. Maybe I can work on these in the new year, I know that at least one of these resolutions will make it into this years list.

Hyperlinking is an issue for many websites, as most refuse to do it. The BBC news website for example does not embed any links to external sources. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly when a writer puts a hyperlink within a post to an external site, their content is then link to the content of a third party’s site, which they do not control. This lack of control is a problem as if the third party, changes the content on the linked page to something different or inappropriate, the author may become libel. Secondly, if the linked site decides to take the post/page down, change their URL structure or the entire site goes down, this would therefore brake the hyperlink. Hyperlinking on a BBC’s news site would be complex, as it would add overhead, as a team would have to be created to check each linked site is still up and content on the linked page is the same. Then is there really a place for hyperlinking on news sites and the web in general?

I think that hyperlinking is extremely inportant if you understand how to do it correctly. Sites such as Lifehacker have the best way of crediting stories. I think what Lifehacker and others like Gizmodo,  understand that news is disposable. By this I mean that most news/blog posts are read within a week of posting and are rarely read again. It is perfectly reasonable to post hyperlinks within a page as the problem of broken links is not an issue as content on an external site is unlikely to change in a week. As most of the blogosphere is an echo chamber these days, I feel that many don’t wish to hyperlink as it only proves that their job is not one of a reporter but a reposter.  If you are going to repost a story with little more than rewriting the facts in it, the least you can do is give complete credit to the original post.

The most important use of linking is the ability to recap someone new to long running stories such as the recent E.coli infection at petting farms. This is an on going story, but what if you didn’t see the first story if you were away from a tv/pc? Would you be able to understand later posts on this subject? Would you be able to come in to a story half way through and make sense of it? Personally, I have had this problem a number of times and found it extremely hard to catch-up to a story from the start as, when I search on google news, I only get the latest updates on the story. If for example, BBC news put a link to the original story in the first line of the post, this might make the process of getting up to speed a lot easier.

The biggest thing that is pushing linking forward is social networking sites. The first site that started social link sharing was digg. Instead of having a blog that you post links to pages that interest you, you can “digg” a story, increasing it’s ranking and likelihood it is on the homepage. Where digg started, Twitter has now replaced social linking. With URL shorting services such as bit.ly, the micro blog service has become an internet giant, simply by being able to posts links to their followers. Not only can links to pages be shared, people can even be referenced as a hyperlink, which can be seen  by the biggest social networking site Facebook which have recently added the Twitter‘s @symbol linking system.

Linking is important for any post or site, it helps people get a more rounded understanding of the subject that is being discussed. It also shows that the writer doesn’t live in a bubble and that they understand that the internet is a fluid and social media. That information can be linked so easily together is amazing in the first place, in books, if the author wishes to reference another text, they would have to give the book name and page number. On the internet it is so easy and so useful, there is no reason not to do it.

RJay45@thespacedmonkey Well I have written problems I’ve had at work and got technical help come back through before. Why are you still tweeting?

I can completely understand his point, if you had a simple idea to share or question to ask, it is a very useful tool. But I don’t think that is what twitter is. Many of the post I see on twitter are not useful one, for all twitter is good for, many of the post are personal updates, such as Kevin Rose‘s wonderful;

Pants status: off

I think that many people believe that twitter will be the next big thing, but I don’t think this will even happen. The difference between twitter and facebook is simple, you be on facebook, you don’t have to create any content. You don’t have to upload anything, you can be tagged in pictures by others and simple enjoy contacting friends. Also twitter has no BUILT-IN was of posting images, which I think is a gaint omission of any social network. Many of the people that do twitter, do not think about what they are saying, just post without thought about what they are doing.

To want to twitter, you want to be a blogger and as the interest has shown not everyone want to be a blogger. So why am I talking about twitter still? I have found some amazing links from it. At the moment, this is what I am doing on twitter.

So I have some questions for those reading this post.

1. What do you use twitter for?
2. What is the future of twitter?
3. Do you think that twitter will ever over take facebook?
   

It was only months later until I back into the service, because when watching Jonathan Ross show, Stephen Fry was a guest on the show and both of them were talking about having twitter accounts. I thought that if Stephen Fry was on the service, he might have something interesting to say, so I might as well give it a go. How wrong could I be, the other day, he posted before and after pictures of his haircut. I mean come on, how vain can a person be to post that. It turns out that they are a number of so call famous people on twitter. All of them seem to think that everyone is interesting is every little fact of they lives.

So back to the question in hand, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing is my answer. I think that is everything wrong with the internet, as it is short form content (as there is a limit of 140 characters) for those that have a very short attendation spans. It allows people to be extremely vain and talk about the stupid manusha of they lives. The worse example of twitter is the story of the man who twittered the results of a trail before the judge read out the judgement, which has caused a mistrial. The only use of have got from it has been a couple of links to interesting projects or videos. They are other services for this, such as delicious and Digg that are much better for social bookmarking.

If you interesting in following me, I am @thespacedmonkey. It automatically imports the posts for this blog and I do, from time to time post interesting links up there. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother..

The thing that interested me the most is the very small amount of numbers that I both recieve and send texts to. I had tonnes of numbers on my phone, friends of old and random people I didn’t really know. From all this, I worked out that I only really needed four numbers.

• Mother(of course)
• Girlfriend
• Best friend on Course
• Sholder to cry on

But being without a phone most useful tool that I have used instead of having a phone is the social networking web site Facebook. With Facebook I have the ablity to have a portal to my community of friends and family where I am. To me at least, it has nearly replaced my phone as the way I interact with my friends. Now I have a new phone, I really need Facebook everywhere I go. A while back I installed the Mobile app. It sends me SMS messages when I get a wall post or message meaning I have both the phone to make calls, texts and now facebook in one device.

With new devices like the Iphone coming out, it is funny to think that I am never happier than with a really old crap phone in my pocket. It means that when I lose this one I don’t really care because it costs me nothing. It also shows how much I really care about new features in phones. I couldn’t give a crap if there is a the best camera in the world in my phone now, as long as I can make calls I am happy. So stick that in your pile and smoke it O2!

When I think of my life at the University of Portsmouth can not seem to imagine what it would be like without the internet. It is such a big part of how I interact with the world and the people around me. It is how I relax by watching funny videos, how I research work problems and where I talk to my friends at the end of the day.

So here is my top ten useful sites

1. Your univierisity web site
   In my case, Port.ac.uk. It is easy going to the most useful tool when there, as most of your life will be spent checking your timetable or email addresses of your lectures. Other unis have forums and blogs. Check it out.
2. Youtube
   One the most useful sites on the internet for filling in time between lectures. There are also lots of viral videos that spread like wildfire. The worst two were
   The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny and Kitty cat Dance.
3. Google
   It is a very powerful tool for researching papers. It has lots of useful tools like book search and Scholar. It also allows you to find all the porn you will ever need.
4. Facebook
   I have already talked about facebook in another post. Also see Myspace.
5. Wikipedia
   Wiki is multilingual, web-based and free encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. When you looking for sources, first place to go. Do remember that it is can have false information and page can change whenever anyone can edit it.
6. Dictionary.com
   You don’t know what one of big word that a lecture or posh person said means, look it up for free.
7. BBC news
   This may seem like a funny one, but I didn’t watch normal TV all the time I was at uni. I got all my news from this site. It started to worry me that I wasnt such who prime minister was and other big events were happening and I didnt know about them. you can also check the weather on here and use it to as a reference.
8. Ebay.co.uk
   Find cheap cloths and pretty everything on here. It past I have had problems with this site, I wouldn’t by anything you would ever want to return, like Computers or CDs.
9. Ebuyer
   For all those things you need Tech wise like cheap laptop or printer, my first stop site. It cheap and the review system is good.
10. IMDB
    The Internet Movie Data base, settling fights about who was in what movie.

The internet is not evil, it is a tool, how you use it is up to you!

Facebook has also added status update which gives 160 character field to write a small little place to wite a personal update. This status is shown in the News feed and can also be outputted as an RSS feed. As I spend lots of time updated this, so I thought I would add to this site. The new feature which I am currently testing at the moment appears on the right hand sidebar, under the heading, My status. It adds a personal touch to the site and adds a new element to page.

I would like to know what you think of it, so please comment.

Facebook

This is the second part of series of posts about life at university and my thought on my first year. The first post in the series just had some general thoughts I had coming straight back from Portsmouth. This post is entitled “faceboking“.

As a student at university, prepare yourself to spend hours of your life on this web site. I have heard facebook discribed as, “Like crack”. If you walk around a computer room in any university campus, you will see many screen with this site on it. I know that I personally have spend hours, tagging myself in photos, search for friends and reading other people walls. But many do not understand this phenomenon. Why is facebook so good?

The site seems to understand that people want to know what their friends are doing and share information easily. The site was orignally designed for students and even now when it is open, it still has that at it’s core. It understand that MySpace is different market, that facebook users don’t care about what look of their profile and that not everyone in the world should be able to see your profile. So other people on your network can see your profile. Your network can be a workplace, region, high school or college. For example, I am member of London and Uni. Portsmouth ’10. Only people that live in london or are currently going to Portsmouth. This is very useful and cuts down on spam friendship requests.

It is truly amazing how useful this site can be, but it can also make problems. For example, if you make a complete fool of yourself one night and say something not very nice. If someone takes a picture of you and tags, people that you would normally very see again maybe be able to find you. Also as everyone can see your relationship status, lots of people as you why have you not changed your profile to in a relationship. This is called making your relationship, “Facebook Official“.

Personally, even through there are bad things about facebook, I still love the site and will use it as long as everyone I know does. It really shows real people, you can really tell how popular someone is by the number of pictures they have been tagged in. This article on the BBC news site, seems to prove that people on facebook are more truthful and real.

If I was a new student to uni, I would get used to the site before going off to university so you can be a good facebooker. Learn that things written on the internet can be taken lots of ways. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t say to someone face. Understand that things write on people profile are public. Happy facebooking.