10 Types Of People

So I heard this article on the World’s Technology Podcast about several countries talking about possibly blocking terrorist websites. The podcast this story was on was about a year ago, so I might be really behind the times, but I just thought I would give a few of my thoughts on it.

First of all, I’m not sure what they will talk about as being a “Terrorist website”. Is a terrorist website something to do with Islam in general? Because I assume there will be stuff that some people might consider “terrorist” on site like that. But then we are cutting off people from accessing websites about Islam…which isn’t quite getting there. I just think it is really hard to decide what websites were considered “terrorist”.

Someone on the podcast likened it to blocking child porn websites. They said that noone would say this is a bad idea…but the flaw in that is that a website is very obviously a child porn website, whereas its not as clear cut with things like terrorism. Its just not simple.

Also, if we start blocking stuff like this, it worries me and a number of other people, that we will become a censorship nation…which I don’t really agree with. Not because I want to access these websites, but more that I think it can go out of control…as we have seen in countries such as China and Burma.

The last point I have was also mentioned in the podcast. Proxies…

In one word I have bypassed all of the censorship, with no problems. I can browse to http://www.proxy.org and go through a proxy in almost any country in the world to access websites blocked in the country. I think it would make more sense to try and close down the sites rather than censor them.

So I heard this article on the World’s Technology Podcast about several countries talking about possibly blocking terrorist websites. The podcast this story was on was about a year ago,...

Ok, so I recently found this fantastic web browser called Flock. Now, to be honest, it is very very like firefox, in fact it is based on firefox. Ok, it is firefox which has been edited. But the edits are fantastic, and really work.

This web browser has been created with people like me in mind. People that have joined almost every social networking site in the world, and don’t want to have all those loaded up in tabs all the time.

Flock includes a sidebar, which I then incorporate with the AIOS (All-in-one Sidebar) for Firefox. And the great thing is, you can use any normal Firefox addon as well. The built in sidebar gives you access to your Accounts, your RSS and ATOM feeds, your bookmarks, a blog editor, a media uploader, a web clipboard and a people’s status updates etc. If you add AIOS (like I have) you can also have your addons, bookmarks, history, downloads, and the source for the website, as options for the side bar.

On the right, you can see a screenshot of, almost, the default layout of the flock browser, with the “My World” page open, the sidebar on the “People” option, and the media bar on the top open. On the left, you can see my view of Flock, with the Sidebar on “People”, all my sidebar options on the AIOS bar, a black theme, on the “My World” page.

To be honest, this browser will not interest anyone who does not use Social Networking sites, however if someone was like me, and was infact a member of almost every social network on the planet, then it would be amazing.

Currently, Flock has support for adding your Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Pownce, Twitter, Youtube, Photobucket, Picasa, Piczo, Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, WordPress, Xanga, del.icio.us, Magnolia, AOL Mail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail, along with any self-hosted blog you have. I also believe that Myspace and Bebo support is in the pipeline now that they both have an API to work with, but not sure when they will be implemented, apart from the fact that on the forum it is stated that Myspace will be sometime this year, which will be great.

The accounts that I have that they currrently don’t support are – Myspace, Bebo and identi.ca. If/when they implement these accounts, I will have all of my social networking in my browser.

Ok, so I recently found this fantastic web browser called Flock. Now, to be honest, it is very very like firefox, in fact it is based on firefox. Ok, it...