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..

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.