The Google-Fu is strong with this one…..

“Google-Fu” is a disciplined mastery of search techniques using Google. A true google-fu master possesses many secret and awe-inspiring keyboard moves that allow him or her totally mastery of the browser and grants ultimate access to the most obscure data.
If you have strong Google-Fu, you can be a truly valuble asset to any organisation or your friends.
The same dark skills also make you a scourge to anyone that claims to have original ideas, but which have actually been sourced from anywhere online.

With the rise of Bing, the Google-Fu master now has a yin to their yang.
There is no official term for a master of Bing, that I am aware of (possibly no masters exist yet). So, I have coined the term “Bing-Do”, to compliment the “Google-Fu” terminology already being used.

It seems that mastery of these two opposing mystic arts may one day bring balance to the interwebz and the wielder of their mighty secrets.
Or, if used for impure purposes, it may be the cause for the downfall of the entire online world!

Either way, as long as there are explosions and maybe a car chase, I will be fine with it!

You can level up in a game, but not in real life.

If you play games a lot, you need to remember the following things:

• Just because you are the most awesome guitarist in Guitar Hero, it does not mean you can automatically rock out on the real thing.
• If you can get the lowest stroke count in Wii Golf, then don’t think you can join the PGA tour.
• Resident evil is not a training film to help you handle the pending Zombie Apocalypse.
• Wasting all the bad guys in Splinter Cell will not make you a master of espionage.

Oddly though, Mario Kart WILL teach you how to drive. Go on – Give it a go!

Sometimes helping your grandparents get online is REALLY awkward…

The generation gap can really kick in hard when trying to explain modern convienience and protocols to the generations that have come before us.
Just when they thought they had it all worked out and had gotten used to doing things a certain way, the whole game changes.

Now, if they want to connect to their grandchildren, they need to be net-savvy enough to use facebook and emails.
It is a mighty task to undertake, but well worthwhile in the end.
After all, the extra learning that is needed to understand what you need to do will help keep the neurons firing in the brain. Research now tells us that using your brain to learn substansial new things, will help hold off possible onsets of alzheimers and dementia.

In fact, in 2009, the Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report showed that in the USA, there was a 513% Growth in 55+ Year Old Users on Facebook.
The fastest growing Internet User demographic in 2009 were between the ages of 70 to 75, and estimates state that over Fifity-five percent of these senior citizens are now online, most with broadband capability.

That is so cool and I applaud any aged person giving the online realm a go.
I also truly hope that our elders have the gumption to speak up online and tell the young and stupid where they are going wrong. Possibly, by way of a long meandering story with no real point to it.

Oh Man! This party looks totally dead!

Sorry, I had to put a lame joke in here. This comic kind of calls for it.
Ghosts are a pretty popular topic in comics and many, many bad jokes exist where they are the main focus of the gag.

I like drawing ghosts and decided that I would just make a comic with a whole heap of them.
It is a very safe bet that this is probably not the last time you will see ghosts in a comic from me, either.
This comic has some well-known ghosts in it, and some “pretenders” who still kind fit the theme.
Think you can name them all?

OK then smart-arse, tell me their names. Just put them into the comments below and I send the first five correct people a ghost sketch.
Five more random people will also get one, but only if they get all the names right.

You can also get extra bonus points (equivalent to 700 internetz) if you tell me who is missing from this comic.

Don’t you love when grandparents re-invent history?

But it won’t be long until some of us start reminiscing about the good old days and creating stories about how life worked before everything was online.

I know some people that even do it now.
They sit around and tell us about how good things were before everyone was distracted by facebook, twitter and iphones.
Yup, in the good old days all they had to keep them amused were video games, IRC chats, Rubiks cubes, messageboards and web-rings…..

Can you imagine treating your doctor this way?

Unfortunately, this is how many web developers and software developers are treated regularly by clients.
Due to website development being a pretty new occupation, there are still a lot of people out there that do not understand what goes in to making that cool website, or that awesome online application.

I have personally been on the receiving end of some pretty ridiculous and outright stupid requests by clients.
It is so common, that sites like Clients From Hell are able to exist and be filled with stories which at first seem totally fictional. But they are not.
But go and speak to someone who works in web development and ask them about horror clients. Every one of them will have a story to tell you.

My theory is that because the average person only sees the front end of websites, they have no idea of the coding work and time it takes to create a good web product. They do not get to “look under the hood” and see all the scripts, calls, CSS styles, etc.
If they did, there would be more understanding that this is REAL work, not just a hobby people do on computers in their spare time.
(Also, many “discount” operators such as outsourced development teams & unqualified designers help to perpetuate a myth that this work is cheap & easy to do)

Think about industries where customers have a better understanding of who the end result is produced:
- Customers would not tell a mechanic to throw in free extras just because they are in the engine anyway.
- Clients would not ask an architect to totally redesign a building plan once it is done, by 9am the next day, because their 6yr old son did not like it.
- House painters are not asked to re-paint a house for free, because the colour now looks different when viewed in the morning sun.
- Lawyers are not asked to work on a case for free, just because it may look good in their resume later.

Sadly, elements of all these things exist within the current client-web developer dynamic.
I, for one, hope this changes soon.

There is nothing more lame than following your parents on social media.

At least, that is what many people think. (mainly teenagers and full on hipsters).
Sure, when you are at an impressionable age, most things to do with parents are perceived as lame and uncool.

But there are also many people who have embraced social media or online communications, as a way to reconnect with their parents and other family members. Now you can reach out and share all things good and bad,  faster and with more details than you could via the phone or letters.
Twitter, Skype, Facebook and emails have replaced the regular call home to mum, or a letter packed with photos of the kids.
Holiday photos are shared almost immediately via Flickr or Picasa.
Family gatherings are organised through Facebook events, Google calendars or email.
Overseas calls can be accompanied with vision, via webcams and Skype.

Technology is giving us ways to share and bring our families together, even as it simultaneously provides avenues to tear things apart.

Now, if I could just create an app to allow Mum to remotely do my washing.
(What? That is not callous.She misses doing it. I just know she does….)

What side will you be on when this happens?

Take a look around and you will see the signs of the segregation that is coming. People are picking a side and defending their chosen brand with conviction and a semi-accurate knowledge of the systems inner workings.

If we are not careful, there will soon be whole sections of cities where certain technology manufacturers are totally banned.
Teenagers will meet in secret rooms to look at the “forbidden” systems not allowed by their parents.
And the world will be a shittier place…….

Why can’t we just have one unified platform that all manufacturers use, and live in harmony for ever more?

Superheroes must be the one of the most feared types of people for tech support staff.

They are magnets for having “computer issues” (as I have already covered previously here) and want everything sorted out right away. They are always complaining that the problem has to be fixed immediately, as it is a “matter of life or death”, or “the fate of the world depends on it”, or “a giant robot is about to crush my skull”.

Well boo fricken hoo! Seriously! Either they are too dumb or overpowered to use their computers in the first place, or they are super geniuses always tweaking settings and adding unauthorised custom software. (Yeah, I’m looking at you batman……)

Artists note :
This joke seems so obvious, yet when I researched it*, I was surprised to find this had not been done yet. The closest I could find was this comic, so I thought I had better give it some props.
If you find another version of this gag somewhere, especially with the iceman in it, please add a link in the comments. I would love to see it.

*Ok, I know what you are thinking – yes, I do research things on the google machine. I am all teknological and stuff.

The really sad thing is that this comic could easily be mistaken for fact.

It is old news now that facebook is in real trouble and whomever it is over there making the decisions on website changes & policy direction, is in serious need of an old school kick in the ass.
Facebook needs to decide very soon what they are going to do to address the unrest and mistrust that they themselves, have created within their user base.
Perhaps the entire business of facebook has just been one big scam to get data to onsell to advertisers? (or as they phrase it “create the open graph protocol for the web”)

Either that, or we are about to see the most the start of the new way that things work on the web, with facebook blazing the path for others to undoubtedly follow. THEY will tell you what you want, rather than listening to your requests?
Many would argue that some corporations and/or industries have been working this way for many years already.

Personally, I am just waiting to see what happens on May 31st, which is “Quit Facebook Day”. Sites such as QuitFacebookDay.com are encouraging you to Delete Facebook accounts on 31 May 2010, if you are fed up of Facebook and its privacy issues.

Facebook has already announced that their privacy settings system will be overhauled some time in the next few weeks, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg more recently admitting in an email exchange to “a bunch of mistakes”. Will these overhauls actually happen?
Possibly, but I think it will not be in the way that the general public are expecting.

Will the mass deletion of accounts really occur?
Yes, I believe some people will make a display of deleting their facebook accounts, but the QuitFacebookDay site shows only around 15,000 committed to this at the time of writing this post. This is not about 0.03% of the total number of facebook users.
If I were a betting man, I would say that I expect at least 45% of the users that delete their accounts on facebook to be back there again in less than 3 months.

So, I look forward to seeing what will occur. Let’s hope it is truly memorable and positive.