While IM might be one of the most revolutionary tools that the Internet has given to the world in terms of communication and time-wasting, I continue to share a bitter-sweet relationship with MSN Messenger which is the IM client most of my friends and colleagues use.
I find Messenger looks like a Christmas tree at times, with all the adverts it displays, and it’s overloaded with features that nobody uses (like webcam integration and ‘packs’!?). The extra advertising and email/my space integration also kill my Internet quota as the app. needs to connect to remote services all the time.
This morning when I plugged my laptop into our network, this is what my MSN spewed out:
Before
This was the final straw, so I decided to do some Googling and came across an ingenious piece of freeware called mess patch which allows you to customise every ounce of MSN, even removing the Microsoft logo if that tickles your fancy.
After a quick installation (make sure you get the right version of mess patch for your MSN build), and a few minutes customising all the options, this was the end result:
After
Much better eh? More streamlined, less advertorial, and a whole lot nicer to look at. I also customised other things like the chat window, removing unnecessary “features” and adding a few of my own (such as a shortcut to “My Received Files”).
So… go ahead and join in the quest for MSN emancipation!!!
Came across this massive collection of Soviet Union propoganda posters (1917-1991) that a collector has placed on Flickr. Quite a fascinating look back in history, although most of the posters were published way before I was born! I reckon this design style is going to make a huge come-back in print media (and maybe even online).
I wonder if the Russian governent could ever sue for copyright infringement? Where’s Mr. Stalin when you really need him? He would sort it out…
It was only a matter of time before the music industry realised the positive potential of Creative Commons and the Internet as a distributing playground (as long as you’re smart as to what is being distributed that is!). It’s no real surprise that the musicians pioneering this initiative happen to be my mother’s favourite band in the whole world — Pearl Jam.
From May 19 through to May 24, fans and curious netgoers, will be able to “legally copy, distribute and share” Pearl Jam’s latest music video, “Life Wasted” which can be found on Google video.
What affect this will have on the music industry and other popular bands is uncertain, but I predict we will see many other bands following suit as having your hit track or music video freely available on a website or p2p sharing network is guaranteed to boost publicity and probably drive up sales in the long term! plus it’s a more realistic form of marketing and communication in the Internet-age!
Adobe Labs finally seems to be doing something on the web development side after acquiring Macromedia last year.
Their latest product called “Spry” is a framework for simplifying the building of Ajax-powered behaviours through a JavaScript-library and relies on a minimal amount of JavaScript coding, which should raise the eyebrows of many designers and developers alike.
There’s a cool photo gallery and RSS reader example to show what its made of!
So it seems that people all over the world and in various disciplines have been inspired by the Web 2.0 phenomenon and are creating new buzzwords left, right and centre with the suffix ‘2.0’ attached.
The latest is NGO 2.0, as coined by Curt Hopkins, who is part of a very interesting project called Blogswana. The concept is explained here:
If the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 can be said to be the transition from static, authorial, unitary, proprietary, non-transferable content to distributed, networked, user-generated, shared and easily transferable content, and if traditional NGOs may be said to function as cash-intensive, centralized, hierarchical, bureaucratic, specialist-driven operations, then Blogswana is, in a sense, NGO 2.0.
One of my new media students, Gregor Rohrig, put together a simple logo for Curt, who now encourages other NGOs that hold the same ideology to use it in their own media.
I just wonder if the loose and ambiguous definition of Web 2.0 that continues to cause much debate on the Internet, has not led to various subjective adaptations of its principles? I don’t know! but maybe it’s a good thing if the worst it does is inspire change and a re-working of existing structures?
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