Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh, but think about it for a moment. Everyone is complaining about power consumption and global warming and whatnot, THE EARTH IS DYING!!!1oneoneeleven, yet by now it’s really fucking hard to find a decent mouse or keyboard that does have a cable.

Why is that?

I seriously don’t understand why it’s necessary and accepted among computer users to have a formerly cable-bound piece of hardware that now doesn’t “need” a cable anymore, but batteries (rechargable or not). Or worse: the mice that come with their own base stations and power adapters.

Mind you, your mouse and keyboard are usually around 50cm to 1m away from your Mac or PC. So why not use something with a cable?

I am currently shopping for a new mouse, hence the confusion. Well, actually I am annoyed. I was eying the beautiful Logitech MX Revolution, which is a wonderful piece of equipment, is ergonomic, has the right size for my paws, it would be perfect!

Unfortunately (for Logitech) I refuse to buy something as mundane as a pointing device with its own PCU. Sure, they probably don’t care.

/sigh

Twitter and Pownce are broken. MySpace, too. Oh, and pretty much every social networking site on the planet, too. For me, at least.

It’s not the technical aspect. Not the concept, either.

(Well, I don’t understand the hype and/or praise sites like Twitter is getting. From a technical standpoint, it’s well done, I won’t argue that, but I don’t get the point of the sites. But back to the topic.)

No, it’s the semantics.

You see, offline, I don’t call many people “friend”. This doesn’t mean I am surrounded by unpleasant people, quite the contrary. But I make a difference between friends and pals or contacts. A friend is someone I would risk my life for. Usually this two-way trust has grown over a few years, and is something important to me.

Now, online, I am expected to call every Tom, Dick or Harry “friend”, and somehow, that doesn’t work for me. I create an account at, let’s say, Pownce, and am instantly bombarded by new friend requests. Usually by people I haven’t spoken to before, let alone met.

Yeah… I am afraid I can’t do that, Digital Dave.

Sites like Flickr do it differently. People are “contacts”. If I decided I like them, I can promote them to “friends” or “family”. Which is okay. If we have spoken online, maybe in the office, maybe even met, then I am willing to add you as “contact”. That’s cool and not diminishing our relationship.

And this is my point: just calling someone “contact” instead of “friend” doesn’t mean I don’t like that person. It just means I don’t know him/her well enough to consider him/her a “friend”. Because to me, this word has a meaning. Shying away from labeling you “friend” isn’t impolite, it’s honest. Because we are not friends.

There are people I am fond of, people I like, but with whom I am not that close. I enjoy hanging out with them, and I enjoy their company, but they’re not my friends. And that is perfectly alright, for both them and myself.

(Truth to be told, it wasn’t always like this. But I’m growing older, and my views change.)

Another example: The other day there was a bit of drama in our little WoW guild. There was a younger lad who we were playing and chatting with quite often. At some point, he felt thoroughly insulted when Christian (pal of mine) and I kindly tried to explain to him that we were not his friends. Heck, we had never met. We were playing an online game together, and chatting a lot while doing so. We tried to get the message across, tried to explain that we liked him, but we didn’t consider him a friend in the true sense. He got upset and left the guild in anger.

Well, it happens. Not much I can do about it.

The net is our (relatively) new world. Our habits are changing, human relationships might, too—at least a bit. Still, should we abandon our values? If everyone is a “friend”, it means nobody is. For me, this prospect leaves a lot to be desired.

Dear site builders, please stop trying to build a virtual Woodstock. I know you’re probably just trying to achieve a feeling of “I belong here” for your users so they come back, but for God’s sake, stop making me pretend I care equally about everyone. Because I don’t.

—

Update, 2007-07-25, 9:18 CEST: jr suggested the use of a new word for this type of online kinship, and I like the idea. His suggestion was “webbie”, but to me that sounds too much like a certain online award.

Anyways, my personal proposal is the use of “webster”. I’ve checked Wikipedia, the original meaning of the word has kind of “expired”, so let’s re-use it. :) Are you with me, people?

After reading another great press release I think I now know what “Web 2.0” means. Up until now I was convinced that if you asked 10 people what it means, you’d get 10 different answers. Turns out all the tech guys have it wrong, tho.

You see, it’s all in the pronunciation. It’s not “Web two-point-zero”, it’s actually “Web two-point-oh”. As in “Web two-point-OH-MY-GOD WE’RE, LIKE, TOTALLY COOL”.

Don’t laugh.

The other day I looked with a friendly non-tech guy at some purdy web pages. (I am not dissing him for not knowing this stuff, he is not a programmer, which is completely okay. I am just telling this to illustrate a point.) It went like this:

Guy, pointing: “That looks pretty cool, what with it sliding out smoothly and all! Ah, Web 2.0, great. Is that AJAX?” Me: “No, it’s a ‘dropdown’.” Guy, pointing: “Or here, all these big image things with the text, that is Web 2.0, right?” Me: “No, it’s static images with text link overlays.”

Thank you, crazy Internet marketing hype machine. I wish you weren’t decentralized so I could visit and burn you down.

That term should be banned from the face of the net. Every time I tell people I work on the Intertubes for a living, it’s always “Wow, like Web 2.0?”.

Okay, fellow tech guys, listen up, this needs to stop. I propose answering questions like that with “No, not ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘AJAX’, we’re doing BARF now. ‘BARF’ stands for ‘Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding’, it’s hot right now. I could explain it, but it’d probably take too long. There’s a number of articles on oreilly.com, look it up, it’s great. It’s going to be in the next release of Django and Rails, man—right in the core, built-in!!”

Don’t tell me it wouldn’t work, don’t tell me it wouldn’t work.

If you’re laughing right now or thinking I am just saying this, you’re mistaken. Let’s turn the Bullshit Train around. I am dead serious.

—

Update #1: The acronym was inspired by the fine Iranian soap products, of course. Update #2: I changed the phrase from “Bitwise Asynchronous Request Forwarding” to “Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding”. It just makes more sense this way.

It just dawned me that on the web, Germany must be to the UK and US what China is to the rest of the “real” World (at least in the perception of the rich western countries): copycats.

Cases in point: Frazr vs. Twitter, StudiVZ vs. Facebook, a dozen del.icio.us clones vs. del.icio.us.

Seriously, the (visible part of the) German startup scene is making a sad impression. Pretty much each new German site I see is more or less a carbon copy of a successful UK or US site. The other day I was even approached whether I wanted to help clone Pownce (“Hey, how quickly could one copy a site like that?”). What happened to ingenuity and/or integrity?

I really start to believe I know the only original guy around.