Philip John

Category: Evolution of the WWW

  • The Bullshit Web, and some bullshit about AMP

    Alright, let’s start off by saying that I’m definitely a little biased – part of my job involves working with the AMP team at Google and the fine folks at XWP on the AMP for WordPress plugin. I wanted to highlight some things about this Bullshit Web piece that’s going around, though. In short: the…

  • Stop whining about privacy: YOU are the one GIVING it away

    Following Facebook’s announcement of their “Home” app, many people seem to have read Om Malik’s melodramatic cry over spilt milk: Om says, “But there is a bigger worry. The phone’s GPS can send constant information back to the Facebook servers, telling it your whereabouts at any time.” Yes, it can Om, you’re right. And how…

  • Why I backed App.net

    Why I backed App.net

    Given the choice I’d prefer to pay for a product than be the product. I want ownership of my own data, my own mutterings, musing, incoherent rants and drivvle. My own words and creations should be available to me in the format I want them in, not subject to someone else’s corporate branding guidelines and platform…

  • This is why I love Google…

    Whilst watching the Olympic marathon I wondered about the length, so I asked Google what 26 miles is in kilometres, knowing it’d give me an instant conversion. A pleasant surprise was that Google figured I was probably watching the marathon given the timing of my query and also showed me the live results, as you…

  • Bad ads

    Finally, I  plucked up the courage to purchase my shiney new Samsung Galaxy S3 (more on that later) and whilst reading the latest news on the Guardian app I noticed that they (or their ad server people) still don’t know how to do ad targeting properly. See my screenshot of the app below, taken on…

  • Think open data is just the realm of geeks? Not in Lichfield…

    This is partly the reason why I love Lichfield so much. Our council CEO recently joined Twitter and was last night tweeting (much revered) webmaster, Stuart Harrion; [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Ninadawesldc/status/133285420699095042″] Where else do you get a council chief exec tweeting her webby on a Sunday evening about the Open Government License?! Fantastic!

  • There is no web 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0

    This is deliberately similar to my first Posterous post, “There is no new vs. old media“… There is no web 1.0 or web 2.0 or even web 3.0. There is only the evolving web. I despise the use of the phrase “web 2.0” when it relates to web design, for example – it implies that it…

  • Free your post code!

    Today, Ernest Marples Postcodes was shut down by Royal Mail. The service enables great sites such as PlannngAlerts.com and The Straight Choice as well as many others. The action is stifling digital innovation in the UK and really needs to be freed up. So, in order to combat this let’s free up the postcode data…