Evidently, this collection of “tubes” that we call the Internet has gone Rick Astley crazy lately. “Rick rolling” is an Internet fad that just doesn’t want to die. In case you haven’t had the “pleasure” of being Rick rolled yet, here’s how it works: someone will post a link on a blog, message board or web site under false pretenses. The text will tell you that the link goes to a funny news story, a YouTube video or something of interest. However, when you click on the link, your browser window it is immediately resized and loads the music video for Rick Astley’s 1980s-era hit “Never Gonna’ Give You Up.”
Not only that, but the video itself jumps around on your computer screen, making it nearly impossible to click it away. Once the video stops moving around (it takes about 30 seconds), you find that trying to close the video only opens a series of Windows warning messages, containing the lyrics to the entire song — one line at a time! The point of this, of course, is to make you sit through the entire video, in all of its 80s long-dustered, spiky-haired glory.
Technically, the “Rick roll” is very similar to a computer virus or spyware, except that it usually has no malicious intent other than subjecting you to listening to — and watching — the Rick Astley video in its entirety. The prank of “Rick rolling” people has spread all over the Internet, and become very popular on YouTube, among other sites.
As with every Web trend, individuals have created their own unique twist on “Rick rolling,” and there is even a Muppet version of the “Rick roll,” and a “reverse Rick roll,” which plays the video both forwards and backwards. Oh brother!
The phenomena of “Rick rolling” has become so popular that as an April fools prank this year, YouTube redirected every video on their site — millions of them — to the Rick Astley “Never Gonna’ Give You Up” video, fooling millions of Web surfers on April 1st.
But how does Rick Astley feel about the “Rick roll” fad sweeping the Internet? In an interview, Ashley said he finds the phenomena “funny,” but that he also understood how it could be the pretty “annoying” to many people. Overall, the baritone pop crooner appears to be taking this new fad in stride and with a good sense of humor.
Having recently returned to the music business after nearly a decade away to focus on being a dad, Astley now finds his popularity growing immensely — especially online. The singer recently released an album of cover versions of soulful classics, and is touring Europe and the United States. Prepare to be “Rick rolled” in person when Astley arrives at a venue near you.
Remember back in the day, in the early to mid-90s when the Internet was this strange and exotic thing that most people were either afraid of and/or had never used? Back then THE web browser of choice was Netscape. Even today, in remote corners of the globe there are Netscape Web browser users, though they are dwindling in numbers with every day that passes.
And just as the Internet and the world in general has evolved since those days, so have computers, operating systems and, yes, even Web browsers. On February 1st of 2008, the Netscape web browser will officially be no more. Netscape’s new owners, AOL Time Warner, have announced that the company will cease development of the Internet’s first real Web browser this coming February.
According to a story on Wired.com, AOL is recommending that current Netscape browser users switch over to Mozilla Firefox. Officially, AOL is claiming that their current business model does not leave enough time or resources to develop the Netscape browser to compete in today’s marketplace — so they’re dumping it.
The Netscape Navigator browser first appeared in 1994 in the “wild west” days of the Internet, and managed to compete well through the late 1990s. Eventually though, competition from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the development of third-party web browsers such as Mozilla, Opera and others left Netscape with an ever dwindling segment of the market.
In fact, in some ways it is surprising that the Netscape browser managed to hang around as long as it did. 13 years is an awfully long time in the online world, and for any software to remain viable more than a decade is a near-miraculous feat these days. So even though Netscape will be officially discontinued in a few months, you have to give credit where it’s due — it managed to hang in there a long time.
Many online security analysts agree with AOL’s decision to drop Netscape once and for all. Experts point out that the latest version of Netscape lacks sophisticated security features available on Firefox, Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari web browser. These “holes” in the Netscape browser’s security could leave users vulnerable to a wide variety of attacks, including trojans, viruses and other malware.
For many people, the demise of the Netscape browser officially marks the end of the Web 1.0 Internet days. But for web users who feel nostalgic for the good old days of the early net, there is a Netscape theme extension for Firefox, which should provide at least some of the feeling of surfing the web circa 1994. Rest in peace, Netscape.
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YouTube.com has certainly led us to scrawling for our video cams and try showing the world what we can do. Though how silly it is, we just can’t get enough in watching people goof of online that we wanted to do something goofy ourselves. Even the site has contests wherein you can easily upload your video and earn some money in the process.
Aside from YouTube.com, there are other websites you can consider joining if you think you got talent. Not only you’ll be pitted with some of the country’s enthusiasts but you’ll be up against the talents of the world. In short, it’s a worldwide competition at the comforts of your home. So take out your digital cams one more time and start singing and create movies.
Bix.yahoo.com – Yahoo’s talent show competition is finished and they already came up with the winner. But that doesn’t mean the buzz for singing has ended as well. Bix, a new service by yahoo, will let you upload anything and compare it with other people. There are those that create contests and let the online users judge them. In your end, you can upload your song with the karaoke tune and see how people will rate them. Though there are no cash prizes involved, the bragging rights is still a sweet deal.
Clipstar.com – still on beta version, the website lets artists upload their own clips and let their audience vote on them. Users will be the judge who’s the best in singing, acting, dancing, short clips, comedy and even animation. The website even has a “live lounge.” Once it’s implemented, the best performer will win a hefty $1,000 plus you’ll be endorsed to popular movie agencies in the US. Although the results of those endorsements are not guaranteed, it’s a great shot to stardom with a thousand dollars in your pocket.
Onlinepopstar.com – karaoke singers unite! If you can belt out songs in high pitches easily, this is your site. Every month, there’s a karaoke competition that lets you earn actual cash prizes. You will even have professional assessment regarding your talent. Upload songs into your own website and see how people will rank you. The bad side is you have to pay $6.00 a month for this service, although you can sign up for free and upload a song or two. The free service will limit the number of songs to be uploaded (12mb) but you can still join almost all popular contests. If you have what it takes, why take their assessment?
Famecast.com – whatever your talent is, this is your stage. Each category is divided into different stages. If you’re good in stand up comedy, do it. For song writers, cover artists of each genre also has their own stage to prove their might. The ultimate prize is $10,000. If you’re in US, they will provide free airfare and accommodation so that you can perform live. Also watch out for their tours, as they constantly look for fresh talents. If they are impressed, you’ll be able to get their professional service for free.
Some people want to travel around the world visiting great spots while staying in the finest hotels, dining in the best restaurants and visiting places with the help of paid tourist guides. After all, we really don’t know anyone in the place and for security reasons we might find ourselves in a very awkward situations in another country if we don’t get to the secured areas. After all it’s vacation right? That means all we need to do is just sit down and relax while the rest of the world get’s up and do their daily chores everyday.
There are some however, who take traveling to the next level. If you’re single or just traveling alone and love to create contacts through MySpace or other social networking websites, then head on to couchsurfing.com. Couchsurfing.com officially coined the idea of couch surfing. No, it’s not a literal couch or anything that you do on it. We all regard couch as one of the basic things that you find at home. From that concept couch surfing means you’re going from home to home not only in the country but in the whole world! By creating contacts, you can invite or be invited to go to a place. Once there, the host will show you to their favorite spots or places they want to hang up. You can even join events….it’s like visiting an old pal but you’re just there for the first time.
The website was created by Casey Fenton in June of 2003. The website started to create buzz because of the newest concept that it offers. Instead of having friends online that you drop a message every day or two, why not visit them instead. That idea clicked and there are people started traveling places to meet people. However, out of the blue an announcement from the owner of the site came: couchsurfing.com is closing down! The main reason is a serious crash in the server and almost all information was lost. But no one, especially those personally connected to be site will take this sitting down. Thousands of e-mail pleading the owner not to close down the site and there are even donations to keep the website running. The website eventually went down in June 2006 but was immediately revived in July 7, 2006. The company is now a non-profit organization and it has currently three employees including the owner.
You would be surprised on how the active members travel around the world meeting people. There are even those that traveled for more than a year and all they do is meet people. For security reasons, anyone who wants to go out and visit someone has to be vouched. Anyone that was vouched could then in turn vouch someone else. Another option is to give out your credit card just for verification of address. Other than that, there’s no other requirement to be with another pal. Just bring your ticket and off you go for a very long vacation with your friends.
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The advent of Web 2.0 has paved the way of different types of user uploaded content. There are now blogs that work like a diary or even for business purposes, and there are also podcasts where users place their views online not in words but in voice. Vidcast is also a form of podcasting but instead of voice, it’s now like a show that’s being uploaded to popular content based websites such as youtube.com. There are even sites that offer free live webcasts. Anyone can now go online and rant for free, no one will stop them. All they need is a computer mic, webcam and headset’s and they are good to go.
Now a small but continuously growing trend in the world of “casting,” just this year, the term pagecasting has been getting a lot of buzz from techies.
Pagecasting has been around for years but it’s more on a personal note. If you have an account in Yahoo!, you may have crossed with their service called My Yahoo!. This page stores everything that you’re interested in. You will be able to see the latest news, the latest comic strips and even the latest e-mails. Pagecasting is essentially like this, with minor modifications.
You can say that a page cast is more like a web portal. Everything that you need to know is there. Instead of going to all the websites, you can just place them all in one place. However, the main difference between pagecasting and web portal is the ability to be shared with the public. Pagecasting will not only be limited to what you know, but you want to share it with the public. iGoogle and my.yahoo.com’s account can be considered like a pagecast but it’s only a portal as it cannot be shared with the public.
But one site has taken the challenge that will enable users to share what they want with the public. Pageflakes.com is a fairly new website that as of this writing has at least 150k active users. This website has taken the term pagecasting seriously and has given all the users the ability to pagecast their favorite sites.
If you have a pagecasting site, you should be able to tell the people what you think, what you love, what you listen to, what you read, and everything. You page can be enhanced with thousands and thousands of widgets but as the website calls it, “flakes.” You can enhance your page with the latest news, weather updates, podcasts, videos and even blogs. You can RSS your favorite site, or even copy a simple code to be launched in their very own account.
So far, pagcasting is not as popular as other “casting” services. However, it will surely be a hit as thousands are signing up every minute, showing curiosity and eventually dedication. Give it a year or two and everyone will literally have their own pagecasting site. Even though you don’t write anything, but you can always share what you know and love with the rest of the online audience.
For years MySpace and Friendster has become the playground for millions. We all go online for an hour or two everyday just to take a look at pictures and the latest news of our friends even though we see them everyday. Sometimes, we just take a look around and see who’s interesting and we try to be friendly with them. If we’re lucky, we can even get invites.
There are times though that we just wish the posted profiles won’t be annoying instead of entertaining. It’s bad enough when we open their profile and something loud really starts to blare in our headsets. Worst is when people post codes with annoying sounds that automatically creates an odd music or noise. Talk about cool.
Looking around, here are some things that you can add to your site or you can even post to your friends comments box. Don’t worry; these are interactive add-ons that will not annoy you and your friends.
Let’s start with Nackvision’s image puzzle maker. This nifty code for your profile and post will enable you to create your own puzzle. What’s great about this is you can actually upload your own picture and create it into a puzzle. Set the difficulty level and try it out yourself. If you think people will now like it, post it to your site or your friend’s site.
Instead of adding some annoying e-cards with music, why not post a game instead? It’s interactive and fun, people will practically stay in your site just to have some fun. Some are really easy while most are plain crazy. Classic games like tetris, pacman and tic-tac-toe are featured games. Go to this link for a full list of games.
MyHeritage.com is probably one of the best postings that you could do for your friends. What’s a better affirmation that you could give to your friends than comparing their face to famous actors, writers, singers and famous persons and scientifically back it up? All you need to do is upload your image and the website will do the rest. You’ll feel like the picture is being scanned by FBI agents waiting for a match. Any picture would do. If you have a small face in the picture, no problem, just isolate your picture and MyHeritage.com will just scan it and get up to eight comparisons. It will show in percentage how close do you look with famous persons.
Before you go ahead and place those interactive games and pictures in your website, make sure it works on different browsers. You have to understand that the developers of these add-ons are not millionaires who can take their time creating the best add-ons. Most of the time; the things that you post in our site will work on the Internet explorer browser. However, there are programs that are not compatible to other browsers. So before you post them in your site, make sure it works great most forms of internet browser.
Simple things to post to gain great friends in your online community. Life can never be this fun.
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Google is primarily known as a search engine. For years, it has become a forefront of everything that you need to know about something. Google has even become an informal verb where you “Google” someone or something for information. If you “Google” someone, that basically means you looked into the internet to get certain information about that someone or something.
Then comes to the services that revolutionized the Internet and cemented Google’s reputation as one of the best search engine out there. Gmail, or Google Mail was released in April 1, 2004 by invitation and the beta version was opened for public registration on February 7, 2007. Google mail introduced the 1 gigabyte capacity that made other e-mail services look into their own email and upgrade. Google upgraded it even more by increasing the capacity of the mail box literally every second.
Its success only prompted Google to offer more services to the public. In this article we take a look at the services they offer, which might be unknown to most of us but are equally as important as the next web-based software you use.
First is the Google Reader. Released in October 7, 2005, Google reader works as an aggregator. The Reader can subscribe to any RSS feed that you provide. It can extract information to any website with RSS feeds and update your reader with the latest news, movies, comics and all the information you need daily. You can even subscribe to a set of popular websites and read them all on one page. This is a great tool for people who want to visit only one site with all the information they need.
Next is the Google Scholar. Google Scholar indexes the works of various scholars, professors and authors regarding a single subject. Released in November 2004 and still on its beta version, Google Scholar can give you all the links regarding a single subject or author you would like to discuss. It’s a nifty website for academic researches and learns about the basic subjects that are available online.
Another great Idea introduced by Google is the Google Books. This was introduced by Google to the public in October 2004 and created some stir. Some people claimed that Google is guilty of copyright infringement for all the books. To understand their claim, the Google Books can provide its users a digital copy of various books indexed by Google. Somehow it died down since some of the important books that were indexed can be viewed only in limited pages. Its main difference with Google Scholar is that Google Books works as an online library of all the books they already indexed. Just type in the name of the author or title and you can view some books. Some of them are free and some of them can be viewed on limited pages.
There are many other projects that Google is working on and will be released for public use. There is also a part of Google that deals with that. That service is called the Google Labs. Google Labs indexes the projects the company is currently working on. You can try out their website and drop in a note or two on what you don’t like or like about the website.
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Although by some standards the World Wide Web is a new technology, it is rapidly evolving and growing. Many World Wide Web experts and engineers, including Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the Internet), believe that semantic web is the next big step. Web 2.0 was the most recent Internet generation and its capabilities are still yet to be fully seen. This newer generation of Internet use makes the Internet a computer platform and offers online applications that you can use from any computer. Web 2.0 has also seen the rise of social networking web sites like MySpace and Digg which feature user generated content. Time Berners-Lee has never fully backed the idea of Web 2.0 since some of these capabilities have been present since the creating of the Internet.
Even though the development of Web 2.0 is still ongoing, many experts like Berners-Lee are envisioning a newer technology that is truly revolutionary and something not available on the World Wide Web today. Semantic web is now being coined “Web 3.0.” This new technology would revolutionize the way information is queried and available on the Internet. The content on the Web would be produced in two different formats. One format is directed towards users and is basically how you view the Web today. It is rich with graphics and text and is tailored to the Internet user. The revolutionary half of the new Web 3.0 is set up so that information and content will be understood, interpreted and used by software agents. Setting up this information in a way that is more computer friendly will allow the computers to find and organize this information more easily.
With the combination of human intelligence and a search engine, Internet users can find just about anything they are looking for by doing a search. If you were interested in finding a 5 megapixel camera for $300, you could browse the Internet to locate such an item. You may have to view a dozen web sites to get an accurate view of all your available options. There are even some product search engines that will allow you to search for this item and find pricing from competing stores. With semantic web, the web sites that carry these items would produce information that is readable by computers so the software that is reading this information can organize it in a much better way. When you search for the terms “5 megapixel digital camera” you may or may not get what you are looking for. Instead of viewing digital cameras for sale, you might end up viewing reviews, some photographer’s web site talking about his camera, or some random page that just happens to contain those words. In these web sites, the text is not associated to each other and doesn’t always produce the desired results. With semantic web, the web site creator can associate a digital camera with its specifications, price and other information. All the information about this product will be bound together so that it can be easily read and located. This information can be catalogued more easily based on what its author says it is. The information can be labeled as product information for camera XYZ, camera reviews, etc. The current World Wide Web doesn’t specify what type the document really is.
Semantic web and the idea behind Web 3.0 seems truly remarkable but other experts believe that it is unlikely or could be many, many years away. The opposition to Web 3.0 claims is isn’t very feasible and there are limitations to the software that would also be required to realize this technology. There are also issues about privacy and censorship that would need to be addressed if Web 3.0 ever truly took off. Along with these issues, Web 3.0 would take longer to become popular because it would require web site creators to produce two different documents for the same thing; one document for human readers to view and another for computers and software to view and index information.
The technology and idea of Web 3.0 and semantic web is not too far-fetched and could be realized in the upcoming years. Although it will definitely take some time and change for people, semantic web could revolutionize the way we distribute and track information on the Web. The Internet is already an amazingly powerful creation that has put more information at our fingertips than the world has ever known. Semantic web and Web 3.0 will organize this information and make it even more efficient to find information on just about anything you can imagine. With some strong support and evolving technology, the semantic web will be the next big thing in the Internet industry.
Social networking sites are one of the strongest forces pushing the “Web 2.0” Internet movement. The phrase “Web 2.0” was created in 2004 by O’Reilly Media and is used to describe a change in the way Internet users are interacting with the Internet and different Web sites. While there are many parts to “Web 2.0,” social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are one of the main driving forces behind this Internet movement, and have become some of the most popular and highly visited web sites on the Internet. You can find an online community or social network for just about any interest you have or by country and language. African Americans can meet new people and share stories on BlackPlanet.com or car lovers can swap and rate pictures or get advice on Cardomain.com. There are hundreds of these sites but there are just a few that stand out as Internet leaders in social networking.
MySpace – Currently the 3rd most popular Web site in all of the United States, MySpace is by far the most popular social networking site around. It is directed and used mostly to teenagers and young adults. MySpace was one of the hottest and frequently discussed Internet acquisitions. News Corporation is now the parent company and is headquartered in New York City. MySpace allows users to create an online profile of themselves and link to their friends profiles. It allows you to upload personal photos, videos, music and other personal information. Along with the extreme popularity of MySpace, they have definitely had some of the most highly news covered controversies. Many young teenagers publish very personal information about themselves including pictures and detailed information about where they live, where they go to school, etc. While they only intended for their friends to view this information, Internet predators have been known to use MySpace as a place to research their victims. MySpace has implemented many different techniques over the years to try to protect minors on their site including adding a minimum age restriction, making it so people over a certain age cannot view minor’s profiles, preventing known sex offenders in the United States from creating a profile and many others. Despite these concerns, MySpace’s popularity continually increases and reportedly attracts 230,000 new users every single day.
Facebook – Originally geared towards college and university students, Facebook is now become popular for all ages but is still most common to college aged users. Facebook is the sixth most visited site in the United States and is the number one site for photo sharing, even more common than Flickr which is its main purpose. Facebook began as a project for sophomore Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg and registered over half of the campus at Harvard. It gained a lot of popularity through Ivy League schools and within a year, had over 1 million registered users. While Facebook is still owned by its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, after the acquisition of MySpace there were many offers to Facebook including a reported offer of $2.3 billion by Internet giant, Google. With 18 million users, Facebook is the place to be if you’re a college student looking to network out.
LinkedIn - This social networking site is business oriented and mostly used by professionals to network with other professionals and previous co-workers, employers, etc. LinkedIn has been nicknamed “MySpace for grownups.” LinkedIn allows users to maintain a list of contact details for people they know and trust in a business sense. LinkedIn also provides features that allow you to post or search for a job, give a personal recommendation for one of your connections and also network to meet people through your existing connections. At the beginning of 2007, LinkedIn had more than 9 million registered users.
Classmates.com – Although Classmates.com isn’t quite as popular as MySpace or Facebook, it was one of the earliest social networking sites. Its traffic ranks at 499 but has over 40 million active members. Classmates.com helps members find, connect and keep in touch with friends and acquaintances that they may have lost contact with from kindergarten clear through college, and also includes work histories and United States military. A basic member registration is free but a more advanced membership will require a subscription. The Gold membership will allow you to contact long lost friends, allow you to plant reunions and events and also form a network group.
Stumbleupon – This social networking site allows users to recommend or not recommend any web site out there. Stumbleupon is a web browser plug-in. So while cruising the web, you can easily click the Thumps Up or Thumbs down button on the Stumbleupon toolbar. Highly ranked sites are recommended by Stumbleupon and receive more traffic. One of the up and coming social networking sites, Stumbleupon has over 2 million members as of March 16, 2007.
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