Wired Mag recently published an article called 101 Ways to Save the Internet highlighting some realistic and some wishful-thinking ways that the Internet can be improved. These were some of the more note-worthy in my opinion (with my commentary in italic):
9) Hands off Internet phone calls Just because the creaky old phone system was regulated to death doesn't mean VoIP should suffer the same fate. Skype is a great example of the power of VoIP
18) Build a .sex red-light district Icann, the committee that assigns top-level Internet domains, refuses to create an adult zone that can easily be kept from kids' eyes. Porn won't disappear, so deal with it. I couldn't agree more.
26) Pass the Do Not Spam list Chuck Schumer's Senate bill sticks American inbox bombers with steep fines and creates a special circle in hell for those who send porn to tots. It's not 100 percent enforceable, but neither is the speed limit on Interstate 80. Not a perfect cure, but would help paired with a good spam filter
32) Build friend-of-a-friend filters Think of it as Friendster for your inbox. Everyone on our list can email everyone on yours, but outsiders have to fill out those annoying SpamCop forms. This would be pretty cool
38) Simplify URLs I love beautiful informative urls or URI's as Mark would so elegantly put it
62) Add a low-bandwidth mode to Internet Explorer. This couped with having IE 5 and 5.5 all on one machine would make a lot of web designers happy
71) Add a recall function for email messages Outlook (with Microsoft Exchange Server) does it, why can't everyone else? One function I actually liked from AOL
75) Let us link to a page we hate without boosting its ranking (on google) True dat
78) Give us a filter option for blogs (on google) Inevitably, this will be needed
91) Stop with the jokes If we get the one about French military victories one more time, we're going to come over and unplug you personally. God. Yes, please.
92) Turn off your HTML email It makes you vulnerable to viruses - and bugs us. Unless its a sale from the Gap or Overstock, you should not be sending me HTML in email
95) Protect yourself, dumbass Download security and virus patches at Microsoft.com/protect. AND please use an Antivirus Auto-protect. I heart Norton because I never get infected
05:31 AM on 01.03.04
I have norton on my system and AVG as a backup. Which my friends find funny because they don't have anything installed. Yeah laugh now, I'll be the one laughing when their computer gets a virus.
I'll also be the one fixing it. :o\