Andrew J Dunlop

If Microsoft succeed in taking over Yahoo! I am mostly not bothered as there are alternatives to most of Yahoo!’s services. The thing that worries me (not in a loosing sleep way, mind) is that Flickr will be destroyed. Microsoft don’t want to take over Yahoo! just to have another company in their portfolio, they will want to integrate its services with theirs and probably re brand them all. At the minute Flickr is a very well laid out site and quite minimalistic despite the large array of features it has.In this regard it is still very different looking to Yahoo!’s other sites. Now add Microsoft’s style of site to this and you have a mess, even worse if they go down the MSN branding route. Another problem is that the MSN sites and MSN messenger carry adverts, whose to say that Microsoft will just be happy to make a small amount of money they make on the Flickr pro accounts and leave it at that rather than plastering it will ads to make a bit more. I hope Microsoft loose this battle but failing that, that they think carefully before making any changes to the services they acquire.

[The mock up Microsoft Flickr logo is courtesy of dr_lopbot]

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I realised today that it has been 9 years since I started my 1st website. Back in 1998 I started up a Geocities website (in the times before Yahoo! had taken them over). It was an eclectic mix of technology news and personal views. Really it was pretty poor, at least what I remember of it (can’t find it on WayBack Machine). That is all…

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I thought when Microsoft started talking about Windows Live that it might actually be Microsoft starting to Innovate. Well I was wrong. One of the main points of migrating services to be web based instead of app based is to make it more accessible and compatible with all computers no mater where you are. However I have yet to find part of it that works with anything other than IE and at a time when so many people have Firefox this is really dumb. If they think that people are going to start using IE again for Windows Live then they are really mistaken. Also I read somewhere the other day that the guy in charge of Live quit because Microsoft were squeezing their funding. Maybe its just impossible for a company as big as Microsoft to Innovate.

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Up untill now google has been the best place to search the web. Yahoo! has just too much rubbish and advertising on it MSN search is… well microsoft. But today Ask.com whcih used to be Ask Jeeves (untill they axed him) has relunched. I have had a brief play with it and it seams pritty good. It has the simplicity of google and all the functions you could ever ask for. I don’t think it will ever beat Google but I think finally there is a really alternative (although I am not changing my searching habits just yet…)

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    Just having a play with a web 2.0 browser that is under development called Flock

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Ok 1st off I have registered ajdunlop.me.uk as my new personal domain and I will be dropping andrewdunlop.name. (will take a while for domain to be functional)

Why? Whats Wrong with your old one I hear you cry? Well one of the (many many) things I like to rant about is the messed up domian name system. What especually annoys me is that the USA use .com .org .net .gov etc… instead of like all other contries use a suffix with there country code .us even though they have one. To add to the problem .com has become the suffix to have so lots of people not in the USA also use .com etc.

andrewdunlop.name is actually a USA personal webpage domain suffix. I live in the UK so I am just adding to the problem. That is why I am changing. Another problem is that .co.uk seams to be most popular in the UK it should be for comurtal use. One reason is that .me.uk hasnt been available for that long.

So instead of being part of the problem I have decided to change and anyways ajdunlop.me.uk looks more like a domain than andrewdunlop.name and I am hoping this can be my domain for life.

One Domain at a Time (TM)

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