Making the Modern World presents a set of twisty little passages through the history of science and invention, from the eighteenth century to the contemporary era, brought to you by the UK's Science Museum.
posted by Miko on Nov 4, 2009 - 4 comments

Despite his carefully cultivated “maverick” image, McCain is playing it traditional and conservative by using HTML 4.01, the W3C spec from 1999.
posted by finite on Sep 9, 2008 - 57 comments

Flash, PDF, two great tastes that go great together? And now you can use PDF flash movies to put videos in your powerpoint – er… what?
posted by Artw on Jun 2, 2008 - 37 comments

Google takes on Wikipedia with Knol. The web responds. Invite only, of course.
posted by Soup on Dec 14, 2007 - 121 comments

In the same spirit as the Open Net Initiative and Committee to Protect Bloggers that both track global internet filtering, Sami ben Gharbia's Access Denied Map tries to track the blocking of sites like Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and others by governments, as well as efforts by activists to keep them accessible or to challenge their blockage.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Nov 19, 2007 - 5 comments

E-motional breakdown: The state of e-mail misery. Is email finally at the breaking point? My inbox is so oversaturated I need professional advice to avoid bankrupcy. Or maybe I'll just wait it out -- the kids might know best.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jul 23, 2007 - 32 comments

Sites that know what you want before you do The web is transforming from a paradigm of self-orchestrated searching to a world in which your shopping cart is full before you login.
posted by AVandalay on Nov 20, 2006 - 43 comments

Good Web Design
posted by Tlogmer on Feb 10, 2006 - 96 comments

Web 2.0 overload - "eHub is a constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing." Tons of links to mashup apps like PervWatch, Podomatic, ThinkFree, etc, etc, etc...(note: a lot of these sites are in beta)
posted by tpl1212 on Sep 30, 2005 - 41 comments

The avatar versus the journalist. Ant farms, Bombay, the neolithic revolution, and Wikipedia.
posted by Tlogmer on Jul 22, 2005 - 18 comments

Yahoo doesn't get enough credit.
posted by Tlogmer on May 29, 2005 - 33 comments

Pupna is "the search engine puppy that retrieves EXACTLY what you are searching for (and absolutely nothing else!)" ;-)

This is a simple yet rather humorous search engine parody - are there any other good ones out there?
posted by Metauser on Feb 28, 2005 - 20 comments

Science & Technology Web Awards 2004 - 50 best sci/tech web sites as adjudged by the editors at Scientific American.
posted by Gyan on Oct 8, 2004 - 1 comment

Client: "People don't know what links are on the web yet, you have to make it blink and say 'CLICK HERE!' " Web designer horror stories from the last days of the dotcom boom. (via the Spinnoff forums)
posted by UKnowForKids on Nov 19, 2003 - 50 comments

Zeldman likes it. Jakob isn't saying, though he'll probably weigh in. mathowie'll probably like it since he seems to dig those Adaptive Path guys. It's elegant, it's like a pleased-with-itself polar bear, it's the AIfIA and there are probably more than 25 reasons it's a Good Thing.
posted by jburka on Nov 4, 2002 - 35 comments

"If you like surfing the web, it is probably because you believe people are basically good." That's the Economist interpreting the results of a recent study by IBM researchers of how cultural characteristics apparently affect people's readiness to adopt new communications technologies.
posted by mattpfeff on Oct 8, 2002 - 19 comments

Are national governments about to take over the Internet? Has ICANN done such a terrible job that they should be permitted to?
posted by rushmc on Jun 13, 2002 - 3 comments

URI terminology demystified Quasi-Socratic Q&A on what the hell URIs are. “Q: What a mess! Are you serious? For a technology so architecturally core to RDF and the Web, that’s quite a kludge-tower! A: What can I say? That's the state of the art as I understand it”
posted by joeclark on Sep 22, 2001 - 4 comments

Big Blue moves into the web services arena, claiming to be the first company to provide such services. Ever hear of .NET? Seems to me that they've been rolling a framework (that's got BETA development tools already) since last summer.

i think the most poignant point in this article isn't the fact that IBM's making false claims, but this quote by Peter O'Kelly:

``It's amazing that these guys are agreeing to work with the same standards. They've finally realized it's a disservice to customers when they try and compete on the basis of proprietary formats and protocols."

Now if the browser wars could end, we'd all be in better shape.
posted by tatochip on Mar 14, 2001 - 5 comments

Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic Jakob Nielsen says "to take the Internet to the next level, users must begin posting their own material ... the vast wasteland of Geocities confirms this. Giving users a home-page editing program does not turn them into good writers." Meg takes Nielsen to task: "his recommended approach is crazy ...Why bog kids down with HTML?" Blogs, of course, are her solution. But for some folks this simply doesn't add up. Saying kids shouldn't learn HTML because Blogger exists is like saying they shouldn't learn to add because calculators exist.
posted by webchick on Sep 30, 2000 - 122 comments

teens spin web of the future. great article re: the winners of a competition for teenagers maintaining useful, unique, nonprofit sites.

Emily Boyde, 17, of Newcastle, Australia, was the only female finalist. Her Web site, MatMice, allows kids to create their own Web sites and view sites made by their friends.

She taught herself to write HTML, the language used to create Web sites. "I don't know a lot of other females who do this sort of thing," she said. "But after I saw the Internet, I liked the look of it. So I decided to learn to use it myself."

Emily rocks my world.
What do you think of the winners?
posted by gusset on Jun 25, 2000 - 2 comments

This article at zdnet is all about how wireless web devices aren't that handy, and how our lives would suck if wireless web access was everywhere. I heartily disagree. I have a wireless 2Mb LAN connection at work and it's liberating (it's possible to code, listen to shoutcast mp3 streams, and check email outside or down at the coffee house next door). My PCS phone is useful too, I can surf a few important websites when I don't have a laptop around, getting news, weather, and email. Wireless access is certainly a Good Thing, and should make our lives easier, but the article's author is blaming the possible deluge of information on wireless, instead of the user. How would a wireless broadband connection make your life better or worse?
posted by mathowie on Feb 1, 2000 - 8 comments