Nick Jackson

And lo, with the blocking of “Have You Ever?” and “Which Les Miserables Character Are You?”, my Facebook blocked applications list now includes over 100 of the most irritating bits of the internet to ever have been created.

I’ll admit to having had a couple of Facebook applications installed. I had a couple of interesting network visualisation ones installed, and still do have one for inserting mathematical formulas in messages around the site. I have even shared applications with people who I thought would find them interesting. However, I object to having people mindlessly send invites to everybody on their address list. Anybody who knows me will know that I don’t do the pointless quizzes, and I have a penchant for elegance and simplicity in websites. Why anybody believes that I would want to fill my profile with things saying “I am most like: Peter Petrelli” and “I have 1,285,395.4 fish in my tank!” is beyond me.

Seriously guys, I don’t want your app invites unless you think I’ll genuinely be interested. I’m far more likely to spot a useful application on your profile and just add it myself.

Oh, and as for the coloured profile people? You can go swivel on it as far as I’m concerned. Facebook started as a simple, elegant method for students to keep in touch. Despite the opening to everybody (Bad idea in my opinion, but oh well) it’s being kept mostly that way, providing you know how to block all the crap. Coloured profiles, even if limited to preselected themes, are a bad idea. Sure, allow users to theme their own view but please, for the love of all things holy, don’t let people expose us to fuschia pink on green.

A huge thanks to National Express, who have finally got the hang of this customer service thing in providing free WiFi on their East Coast train service. This is a welcome departure from GNER’s somewhat irritating “Pay us $100,000,000 for the privilege of connecting!” stance, however in the spirit of being big business they still ask for some information - namely your email address so that they may better spam you with unwanted offers.

Surely if you’re offering free WiFi, you may as well just leave it open and not require a HTML login form so that users with browserless devices (VoIP phones, for example) can take advantage. Oh well, it’s still better than nothing.