The web is a world of unlimited choice and unlimited possibilities. So why does everyone choose to use Facebook? Why is the web dominated by a few big companies?

I watched the first part of the BBC documentary The Virtual Revolution yesterday on iPlayer. They made the point that:

When there are no rules, there is nothing to stop those with huge resources dominating everyone else.

Google is obviously the biggest at this point in time, but Facebook is also massive. I don’t really mind Google. They’re big because they’re good and more importantly if I want to use another search engine I can do so very easily.

I feel locked into using Facebook and if I want to use something else I need to persuade all my friends to join me. For example I use Flickr to share my photos, but the majority of my friends don’t want to join Flickr and so they can’t see any of my non public photos.

At one point I had delusional ideas of making the next Facebook. In fact, I was hoping to make the next MySpace, but Facebook beat me to it. That was the capitalist me thinking, but as an individual I don’t really want another social super site that everyone I know uses. I want to publish whatever I want, wherever I want and I want it all to be linked together; perhaps with something clever, like hyper links. I also want a social element and I want privacy. I’d like my friends to be able to view my site and see content that other people can’t such as my personal phone number and photos of our last get together.

Facebook gives us this to some extent, but why does everyone need to be on Facebook. Why can’t we all be on our social network of choice or on our own personal site? Why can’t we do this and still keep up to date with what our friends are doing on their social site of choice?

The web was successful partly because it made a set of tools freely available that anyone could use. Anyone could make a webpage and publish whatever they want. Facebook has added a social layer, but has taken away the choice. If we want to get that choice back we have to build up free and open social tools and take the ones that already exist and make them easier to use.

These tools are already starting to appear such as OpenID and Open Social, but these sorts of tools need to become better and they need to become ubiquitous. We the geeks need to start making sure we use them and improve them. When we build a site with social elements we need to use make them open and think about integrating them with other sites of the user’s choice.

By putting choice back in the hands of the user perhaps the Internet will become a better place full of opportunities for all of us. It won’t matter that the big companies have more resources because collectively we have more.

I'm working on a Jam Jar Collective project at the moment that involves projection and motion tracking. This is a little tester app that hooks up to your webcam and follows any movement it sees. Press 'Start webcam' to have a go. You need to have a webcam and your computer will ask your permission to use it.

This motion tracking app was made using Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3. You can download the source code if you fancy tinkering with it.

I love Brighton and I loved dConstruct last year when I came for the first time. So it was hugely exciting to get an unexpected email inviting the Jam Jar Collective to come and show off FriiSpray. The Jam Jar Collective are a group of geeks and artists interested in making interactive stuff and FriiSpray is an interactive graffiti wall that we made. The rest of them couldn't make it down, so my good friend Dave is helping me instead.

I always like to see behind the scenes, but when I arrived today with my suitcase full of projectors and laptops all the doors at the Brighton Dome were locked. Luckily I saw Jeremy Keith walking past carrying some bits of stage and he was kind enough to let me in. Everything seemed fairly calm inside and like they were pretty much ready for the activities of tomorrow. I set FriiSpray up between the O'Reilly book stand and a collection of Microsoft Surface tables. I really wanted to have a play on surface but they were doing a windows update.

I went to the pre party for a little bit, but I had an SQL problem on my mind (now sorted). Plus I really want to add some new features to FriiSpray for tomorrow, although it's getting late now. Anyway, really can't wait till tomorrow. Should be a fantastic day.

When I started blogging I wrote my own blogging engine as a way to improve my ASP.NET skills. It was a nice project, but as other blogging engines became more advanced I didn't have time to keep up. So I've wanted to move my blog to another engine for a while. There really is no point in reinventing the wheel and I have more exciting projects now.

I heard about Oxite while I was looking into ASP.NET MVC. MVC is way of structuring applications and has been around for ages, but ASP.NET MVC is a new thing and a thing that I'm quite excited about. Oxite started life as an MVC example and isn't a polished product yet. However, I thought it would be an excellent way to become more familiar with .NET MVC.

It didn't quite meet my needs out of the box. In particular I didn't want my old URLs to break. So I've hacked it about a bit and in the process learnt a lot about MVC. I'm slightly dreading the planned update to Oxite though as the modifications I've made will probably get in the way, but I'm sure the updates will be worth it. I was surprised and pleased when one of the Oxite developers got in touch via twitter to check if I liked Oxite and to offer any help if I needed it. I did end up needing it and he was very helpful, so big thanks go to Erik Porter.

I'm due to start my first .NET MVC project in two weeks and playing about with Oxite has been a big help.