Bytes · Web2.0 distracts - Fat Long Tail - Climate myths

catch up ..

• icommons: Get wikifying! 10 of the best, most interesting wiki communities
  
  
• Search Engine Land: Key Differences Between Yahoo Search Marketing & Google AdWords
  
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  Jakob Nielsen to BBC: Web 2.0 distracts from good design.
  
  Etre agrees:
  
  

  That said, we've also seen some Web 2.0 design patterns put to good use, for example making the consequence of an action more explicit, thereby helping users to understand the effect of the various options presented within an interface. However many of these effects were achievable using ol' fashioned JavaScript in the days before Web 2.0 was shrink-wrapped, badged and sold as the latest in trendy technology (see "They've rebadged it you fool!").

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  Duncan Riley on TechCrunch reports that The Long Tail Is Getting Fatter
  

  Although this fattening of the Web 2.0 marketplace makes it more difficult to stand out from the crowd, the marginal cost and ROI potential has now improved.

  
  
  However the background as disussed by Richard MacManus on Read/Write Web is of The Shrinking Long Tail - Top 10 Web Domains Increasing in Reach
  
  Nicholas Carr: He found that between the end of 2001 and the end of last year, the number of Internet domains expanded by more than 75%, from 2.9m to 5.1m. At the same time, however, the dominance of the most popular domains grew substantially. At the end of 2001, the top 10 websites accounted for 31% of all the pages viewed on the net. By the end of last year, the top 10 accounted for fully 40% of page views. There are more destinations online, but we seem to be visiting fewer of them.
  
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  PSF has more on the DirectGov research previously mentioned:
  

  
  The national study commissioned by public services supersite www.direct.gov.uk questioned parents, teenagers, over 50s, motorists and disabled people.".
  
  We requested this research and received this data-heavy 100-page survey report of 2,000 people that you can download from our site here. The evidence for Directgov's claims is not particularly convincing, with those wanting online services very much a minority group. Of those questioned, our survey said 8% of motorists wanted to be able to report a bad driver online, 10% to check their car's carbon emissions online and a relatively high 23% of parents wanted to be able to have online truancy alerts.

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  Bill Higgins says interface designers are in the midst of a "technological paradigm shift". "Emulated user interfaces" are turning into "desktop app in a web browser" with consequent issues. He likes GMail.
  
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  New Scientist Online has an excellent, new-ish section 'A guide for the perplexed' on climate myths - a selection:
  
  
  
  • Human CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter

  • We can't do anything about climate change

  • The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

  • Chaotic systems are not predictable

  • We can't trust computer models of climate

  • They predicted global cooling in the 1970s

  • It's been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal?

  • It's too cold where I live - warming will be great

  • Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans

  • It’s all down to cosmic rays

  • CO₂ isn't the most important greenhouse gas

  • The lower atmosphere is cooling, not warming

  • Antarctica is getting cooler, not warmer, disproving global warming

  • The oceans are cooling
  
  • Higher CO₂ levels will boost plant growth and food production

  • The cooling after 1940 shows CO₂ does not cause warming

  • It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England

  • We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

  • Warming will cause an ice age in Europe

  • Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

  • Ice cores show CO₂ rising as temperatures fell

  • Mars and Pluto are warming too

  • Many leading scientists question climate change

  • It's all a conspiracy

  • Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming

  • Polar bear numbers are increasing

  
  

The effects of global warming are already being felt worldwide. The Larsen-B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula collapsed over 35 days in early 2002, prompted by 3°C of warming since the 1940s. (NASA image by Jesse Allen, based on MODIS data.)