Depriving someone of internet access is essentially depriving them of a human right, according to a New Zealand government minister, Judith Tizard. The internet is now so much an essential part of life and commerce that access to it can be seen as "a human right", says Culture and Heritage Minister Judith Tizard. She made the remark on launching a book on the history of the internet in New ... Read full entry

Web "creator" Sir Tim Berners-Lee has called on governments, scientists and businesses to work to ensure the Web remains true to its original purpose... "The development of the Web will have major social, economic and political implications for our future," said Sir Tim. "At its core must be a commitment to maintain the principles of openness as a platform for the sharing of information," he added.

Tim Berners-Lee would like to see the Web becoming a repository of "partly formed ideas" that could eventually assist in solving some of humanity's larger problems, by forming a "trail of thinking", that people could progressively contribute thoughts to until, through collective thinking, a solution emerges. It is an idea he refers to as "creative connectivity". "Now just suppose, given that we have those huge problems out there to solve in ... Read full entry

While browsing Vanity Fair earlier, I spotted this fascinating article on the history of the web, from the time of its inception in 1958, interestingly part of the US response to the launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik, right on through to user-generated content and social networks. Needless to say a lot ground is covered, taking in the browser wars, the advent of Google, and the rise of the iPod ... Read full entry

Shake out time is fast approaching, and the days of the Web 2.0 boom are drawing to a close says computer scientist, entrepreneur, and PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin. This is Levchin's reasoning. Members of the last crop of start-ups - many of them Web 2.0 companies created two-three years ago - are fast approaching their date with destiny. A slowing US economy and worsening financing environment will force those ... Read full entry

Stop using Ajax! James Edwards aka Brothercake, and co-author of the The JavaScript Anthology, argues the case: See, the web already was accessible to everyone. Tim Berners-Lee's original vision for the web was all about universal access; and the technologies involved - such as HTTP and HTML - were designed to be platform and device agnostic; it shouldn't matter what kind of technology you use to access the web. ... Read full entry

The inaugural Canberra BarCamp is being held at the CSIT Building at the Australian National University on Saturday 19 April 2008, from 10am until 5pm. For the Canberra BarCamp we're totally open to topics beyond technology to include entertainment, art, marketing, other technologies and content such as podcasts and so on. Ideally, whatever you talk about will have some form of technical or geek-friendly angle.

A Guide to Web Typography In the recipe for great web design, typography is an essential ingredient. Typography for the Web has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee flipped the switch in 1991. Back in the days of IE 1.0, good web typography was something of an oxymoron. Today things are different. Not only do we have browsers that support images (gasp!), but we have the opportunity to ... Read full entry

$1 million adds a letter ‘s’ to a Net address There's still plenty of money to be made in generic domain name speculating game. A British travel company has paid $1.1 million for the domain name cruises.co.uk, a price that is effectively $1 million just for the letter "s" since it already owns the address cruise.co.uk. The sum shatters the previous record for a .co.uk domain of $300,000, paid in ... Read full entry

DWWS Facebook group: that is Designing With Web Standards. If you're a web designer who works with web standards (and you should be), and are interested in networking with other like minded designers, this Facebook group could be for you. Following Instructions to the Letter: this is what you want? This is what you get! The rise of Wordpress for 'Non-Blogs': not all Wordpress powered website are blogs, ... Read full entry