This is something that I mention over and over again, but it is a fact that one of the most common things people say about my blog is along the lines of, “Of course, I skip past all of the F1 posts.”

Those people would be doing a lot of skipping this weekend. The F1 season reaches its climax tomorrow, and the repercussions are sure to continue into the weeks ahead.

Just in time for the end of the season though (!) I have finally set up an RSS feed that contains none of the F1 posts! I created it using Yahoo! Pipes. Unfortunately, I can’t work out a way to make it a full feed. No matter what I try, it always comes out as a partial feed. This goes against my principle of being in favour of full feeds, but it’s better than nothing.

So if you like this blog but can’t stand F1, grab the doctorvee F1-free feed here.

I’ve been pondering this issue for at least a year now. There is still a bit of me that is tempted to completely remove the F1 content and create a separate F1 blog. I’m not too keen on the idea on the one hand. The F1 posts have become part of the character of the blog, and most importantly it would be a bit odd for my personal blog not to contain anything about one of my main interests.

I’m not sure a separate blog would be able to punch its weight either. It would be a bit difficult to justify setting up a separate blog if I am only going to post intermittently to it (my plan would be to post little, if any, more than what I already do).

Also, maintaining yet another blog would be rather time consuming. Imagine that — whenever a new version of WordPress came out, I would have to upgrade it for three blogs! Just the one is hassle enough.

However, come the start of next season I should hopefully have a bit more time on my hands. And I am still too proud of the ‘vee8′ name to let it go unused!

NB. This is part two of a two-part post. Read part one here.

I was explaining how, sitting here today, it is difficult to see why anyone would want to sign up to a social network that isn’t Facebook.

While MySpace used to be the market leader, it was always far too annoying and buggy to remain on the radar for long. Every time I visit MySpace I just get bombarded with spam. Most friend requests are either from awful bands, fake people or are just plain spam. Visiting MySpace is like wading through a thick, stinking swamp. With pink glittery things in it.

By contrast, I don’t recall ever seeing a single piece of spam on Facebook. Not even a spammy friends request.

As for Bebo, at least you can say they are not just burying their heads in the sand. I never really saw what Bebo had going for it, apart from being slightly less worse than MySpace. But that’s not saying much. They have recently launched a minor redesign, which looks like a desperate attempt to be perceived as Web 2.0.

But Bebo is a pretty tired site now. As I said above, many of the site’s features are now watered-down copies of other websites. Take the “sayings” feature, a recent feature which is a copy of Twitter in every way. Except the Bebo version does not link to your mobile phone, and is generally a bit rubbish.

I guess the “me too” thing is quite clever, but I think it says something about Bebo users if they can’t even think up an original thought. And what is with those Skittles emoticons? Why? They seem immensely popular as well.

My biggest beef with Bebo is the fact that you can’t post a link on your profile. That is the stupidest thing ever. Is not the WWW supposed to be all about links? Even worse, when you just type in a URL, Bebo puts spaces in it to prevent the text from spilling over the narrow columns — so these URLs become broken because of Bebo.

But despite all of these niggles, I don’t think Bebo is in any immediate danger of going south à la MySpace. Bebo attracts a different audience to Facebook. You get a lot more young people there, which you might be able to tell if you clicked the link to the popular sayings above. They won’t be tempted by Facebook at the moment. But what about when they grow up?…

As for LiveJournal… aaah. MatGB’s brilliant post on this matter sums it up (and that was what spurred on many of the thoughts that led to these posts). He thinks LiveJournal is dying, and he is probably right.

The only reason I have a LiveJournal is because I got it years ago, when it was still vaguely popular. One-by-one, my friends that did use it stopped. I can think of only one “real lifer” LJ friend that still posts on LJ. My posting there has slowed to a trickle (once every 2 or 3 months, really) and just about the only person who ever posts comments on my LJ now is MatGB.

When Vox was released, I said that I would probably choose Vox over LJ if I didn’t already have an LJ account. Now it is difficult to think of a website that I would actually prefer to sign up to rather than LJ. Hell, even when MySpace came along, LiveJournal suddenly looked a bit old-hat. Dare I say it’s a Web 1.0 website trying to survive in a Web 2.0 world.

It might be different for me. LiveJournal always seemed to be a bit different. It’s got a community that I just never found myself able to become a part of. For this reason, I reckon LiveJournal will probably keep many of its current users until they die.

But MatGB hit the nail on the head. If you didn’t have a LiveJournal account, why would you sign up for one today? Why would you, when you can sign up to Facebook? Six Apart have pissed off a lot of LJers, and their recent accidental deletion of up to 500 legitimate LiveJournals does little to instil confidence in the people running LiveJournal.

In short, Facebook is in prime position to collect up a huge proportion of the users of social networks. It already attracts all sorts of people who weren’t tempted by MySpace or Bebo. And because of the smart way Facebook has allowed itself to grow, that looks set to continue. At the moment, it is unthinkable that Facebook will drop the ball like Friendster, MySpace and LiveJournal all did.

While the refusal of Facebook to sell out to Yahoo! for $1bn might be seen as arrogance, on the other hand I think Facebook are really clever not just to become another one of those companies that gets bought by Yahoo! / Google / Microsoft / eBay.

I get the feeling that a lot of the Web 2.0 startups that have been sold to larger companies have become a little bit fusty. I no longer see the appeal in Flickr at all, and when was the last time you saw something new from del.icio.us?

I get the impression that for too many startups, their entire business model is based on crossing their fingers and hoping that Google buys them. I mean, where does Twitter get all its money from? Eh?

Facebook is ambitious, and it’s willing to stand on its own two feet. That’s really admirable. And while I’m not an expert in either technology or betting, who is to say that Facebook won’t be one of the web’s very biggest companies in a couple of years time?

Update: Forgot to include a link to this post from a former social networks-skeptic who has joined Facebook.

Update: Would usually del.icio.us this, but it is quite salient to this post, so: Wisdump: The Ebb and Flow of Social Networking.

I thought I’d write about a couple of cool websites I’ve been visiting recently.

Back in the day I used MyBlogLog to keep track of what links visitors to this blog were clicking. But then I got bored of it and stopped using it. When I heard that Yahoo! was thinking of buying it, I thought I would check it out again. I actually said, “It would be interesting to see how it’s changed since I last saw it.” And boy has it changed!

It’s not like a social network for blogs. As if we needed another social network! But this is actually quite a good idea because it emphasises the community aspect of blogging. It also reveals connections between blogs that you might have thought didn’t exist. Here is my user profile for MyBlogLog, and here is this blog’s community (feel free to join it of course).

The other website that’s quite impressed me recently is Twitter. It’s another sort-of social network, but it’s more like a blogging tool. But not. It’s from the people who brought us Blogger and Odeo.

At first I had a struggle working out what it actually was. It’s such a basic idea, I needed to make sure I had it straight. You just type in the box what you’re doing. And that’s it! That’s it! At first I thought, “What’s the point in this? I could just write this on my blog.”

Theoretically, one of the best things about blogging is that there are no rules. It shouldn’t really matter if I just rattle out a one-line post. But in reality is does matter, because it looks quite stupid. That’s why I introduced asides to the blog. It’s true — the format of your blog determines your writing style.

Twitter is based entirely on messages that last no more than 149 characters. Like a text message then. And that’s where things start to get cool, because you can send an update from your phone. I can imagine doing this a fair bit on the train. But if you don’t fancy paying the “standard network rate” you can also update via IM or via the web. And you can also receive updates from your friends via IM or on your phone.

It might not amount to much in the long run, but at the moment I really like the idea. It gives me the space to put frivolous nonsense up there without dumping in on blog. Here is my page on Twitter.

Just been playing with the new geotagging feature in Flickr. It’s good fun, but the poor quality of the maps really let it down. It’s impossible to accurately pinpoint where anything actually is, particularly since roads are most straight lines and railways often wander out into the sea.

Place names are pretty bad aswell: Burntisland is named correctly, but it is next to a non-existant town called Birntisland! Kirkcaldy isn’t named at all, and Dunkeld and Birnam have merged to become Dunkeld-Birnam. It’s just as well this tool exists then!

Update: I’ve found Kirkcaldy on Yahoo!’s map — in completely the wrong place.

So I can now use MSN sorry, Windows Live Messenger to have a chitty-chat with Yahoo! Messenger users. But I have to add them all first. Why can’t I just associate my MSN account with a Yahoo! ID? Can somebody tell me, is there a reason for this, or are they — MSN, Yahoo!, the lot — all just being arses again?