Today, leading UK computer retailer PC World announced they will stop selling floppy disks. Most news sites seem to think this is a good step forward to new methods of data storage. I disagree, though.

Floppy disks are remarkably important. For example, most operating systems don’t have my RAID drivers; so in order for me to install them I must insert a floppy disk with the correct drivers on. The same goes for setting up old computers; you need a floppy disk in order to boot to CD.

Interestingly, software giant Microsoft seems to be keeping the flame alight for the floppy.

I wonder why! I remember my RC1 of Vista required RAID drivers on a floppy! On that note, I’m not planning on buying Vista any time soon.

I’m sure floppy disks will be available for many years to come across the Internet, though, so there’s no need to panic!
Sorry for making just a brief (non Web 2.0 related!) post today, however, I’ve been pretty busy.

Tags: floppy disk, storage, hardware, floppy, floppies

Ziki is a service which has an aim somewhat similar to that of ClaimID, to store a person’s online presence in one central location, but seems to do that in a manner somewhat similar to Suprglu or Profilactic by aggregating feeds of your activities on various sites. You can also link to your account on other sites, which it grabs the favicons from. The site also allows you to post items straight to it, such as blog entries or bookmarks. The site also allows companies and groups to maintain Zikis, a feature ClaimID and Profilactic/Suprglu seem to lack.

The sign up process is not as easy as that of Profilactic as there’s a lot more compulsory fields. Like Profilactic, though, location is a compulsory field. This might make things hard for bloggers who wish to use the service but hold some sort of anonymity (such as myself). You are also required to tag yourself by listing things such as hobbies etc. My tags, as an example, include web2.0 and AJAX. You can then search the site for people with similar tags.

Ziki uses a lot of Ajax. While flicking between the various parts of my profile, I don’t think I saw a single page refresh.

An interesting feature Ziki has is that it aggregates data about your readership from both Feedburner and Technorati. It then says how many people in total read your feeds from across your various blogs. I, apparently, have 1439 Feedburner subscribers in total to Webby’s World and BlogsBlog. This is a nice way to boost your ego!
Ziki are prepared to give $10 of free Google AdWords, on your name, to the first 10000 members. Unfortunately, in order to qualify for this offer you must provide at least 5 tags for yourself as well as a photo.

The site’s design is very Web 2.0; however I do think there is a bit of a conflict between light green and black (see below).

Ziki is a promising site, however, it doesn’t seem to have a niche like the other Identity 2.0 services. Ziki is far too broad: being a blog host, bookmarking site and aggregator amongst other things.

Tags: web 2.0, web 2, web2, web2.0, identity, identity 2.0, identity 2, ziki, free stuff

• Azhar did an interesting post regarding Microsoft’s (pathetic) advertising campaign in India regarding genuine software. It got to the Digg front page for an (extremely) short time.
• WordPress 2.1 was released. It’s pretty good, although my log-in page is not displaying very well due to the OpenID plug-in I have installed. Kamigoroshi did a post on why he won’t be upgrading.
• There was a massive controversy regarding Microsoft paying a blogger to make Wikipedia edits. This editor then went on to use the Wikipedia to prove a point.

Mashable has reported that Fox has subpoenaed YouTube to find out the identity of a user who uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons and 4 episodes of 24. Sites like AllUC rely on people uploading copyrighted material to video sharing sites; and while AllUC seems legal at the moment in most jurisdictions besides Australia, as it only links to episodes, it would ultimately die if nobody was willing to upload videos in the first place on the risk of getting sued.

It is not uncommon for TV networks to provide DMCA notices to video sharing sites demanding they remove TV or movies, however, to my knowledge this is the first time a TV network has been interested in sueing a single user. While the BPI and RIAA sueing P2P users hasn’t really scared them off; sites like YouTube are no doubt easier to police. Pete Cashmore is very keen to reinforce the effort Google (YouTube’s owner) put into protecting the identity of their users.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has been subpoenaed due to piracy, however, it’s the first time YouTube has since Google took it over.

I think that a much better approach would be for TV networks to upload their episodes to popular (not their own) video sharing sites and serving commercials with them. I’m sure most users wouldn’t mind watching an ad-supported online TV episode. Same goes for music!

Tags: youtube, piracy, copyright, fox

Profilactic is a service which aggregates your activity on different websites such as del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, YouTube and/or your blog. It sounds very similar to the Suprglu service, which we reviewed last year but is pretty inactive right now.

The sign-up form is extremely simple; you only need to fill out four boxes (username, email, password, confirm password) as well as ticking a checkbox stating you agree to the site’s ToS. Following this all you have to do is confirm your email address. A small thing I like is that how when you confirm it you get taken to a special log-in page where all you need to do is fill in your password. In the URL, I observed the file extension JSPC so I assume Profilactic is built on Java Server.

After you log-in for the first time, you are straight away taken to a wizard where you can add your details for various sites. These include all the large sites, such as Flickr and del.icio.us, but also include smaller upcoming sites such as iLike. You can also manually add RSS feeds for it to aggregate (such as your blog or accounts on other non-supported services).

A small annoyance with this is that you can’t add multiple accounts (for example one might have a few del.icio.us accoutns for different purposes) and also the site does not require you to authenticate your identity (so in theory you could easily use this site to plagiarise).

The wizard utilises a lot of Ajax, and when you add an account the page does not refresh.

You also have a profile where you can place personal details, such as your favourite TV shows and DoB. I do dislike, though, that if you choose to create a profile you have to disclose your geographic location.

The page with your feeds all aggregated is, in good Web 2.0 fashion, called a mashup. The site Ajaxly and dynamically generates your mashup (page with all feeds displayed). While this is annoying as it takes longer to load; it is much better than relying on caches 24-48hrs old like Suprglu. Our mashup is here.

The site also has social features, for example you can add friends and have their mashups linked to. My username is computerjoe, feel free to add me.

You can also have a badge which is a JavaScript widget that allows you to include your mashup in your site.

Profilactic does feel quite a bit like Suprglu. In my opinion, even the logo is similar. However, Profilactic seems to perform in many areas Suprglu doesn’t. It uses Ajax, is very dynamic and also very fast (as opposed to Suprglu which can take up to 30 seconds to load on a 3Mb/s line!

Tags: social, web2.0, web 2, web 2.0, identity 2.0, profilactic, suprglu, ajax, identity