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At the same time that we have an increasing use of interruptive advertising and more incidents of misuse of personal data we also have fluff going and growing big time, the best examples being YouTube and Facebook. While there is definite value to both, they are overwhelmingly about brief, slight diversions. Both are designed for people in cubicles who are bored mindless during yet another endless teleconference. They’re about having maybe five minutes to break up the tedium. There is very little that is substantive to either and, let’s be honest, nothing of substance would fly on either, at least in the majority of cases.I wouldn’t have a problem with this – the Internet has been filled to bursting from the beginning with the irrelevant and superficial. But so much marketing is tied to it now, so many big companies are throwing their all into developing more of these fluff machines, and with such an increase in annoying ads and the numerous personal data issues that keep cropping up, it strikes me that the Web is killing itself.

- Writelife » Blog Archive » Marketers at the Gate: The ever more annoying Web

Oooooh, nice rant, Bill. Personally, I don’t think all this fluff is killing the Web anymore than dancing babies and ‘funny’ email forwards have. The fluff is just Internet faddishness. It will eventually give way to a different kind of fluff, and we will all continue wasting time on our PCs until the end of time.

You hear a lot about the potential of mobile browsing, but when it comes down to it, the interface is just so clunky and the data rates so high that spending time surfing the internet isn’t all that appealing on a cell phone. Mozilla’s Joey project doesn’t solve the UI problem, but it does make it easier to take a bit of the ‘net with you by making it easier to access files and information via your mobile browser. It doesn’t require you to download anything to your phone, but you will have to use whatever browser is installed on your phone.

I mostly use Gmail and Google Reader on my mobile browser, as I’ve got my bookmarks all set up to easily access those pages. I like the idea of using Mozilla’s Joey to send directions from Google Maps to my phone, and possibly also videos or photos that I might want to view or share later.