When we hear “Basing a business model on revenue from nonexistent advertisers or customers”, all we see is the famous “Dot-Com Bubble”, which burst in the year 2000. Online entrepreneurs were done in, not by Y2K causing all our data to go kabloowie, but by unrealistic, lofty expectations of money that just doesn’t come through.

Now, the thing with appreciating the value of a digital product is one we all struggle against. “What, this web design costs more than that web design? They’re all the same, aren’t they?” Like the article says, people will accept that with wine. Or for an even simpler example, pie. If you get a half a pie from one seller and a whole pie from another at the same price, you can see which one’s the best value, right? With web design, people don’t see the value. There’s all this back-end code that goes into it. The user doesn’t know, they just see black text on a white background with some pictures and say, “Yeah, it looks all the same to me!”

• The US is going crazy about SOPA and PIPA, two anti-piracy bills that threaten web freedom. It got so extreme that the English Wikipedia blacked out for one day.
• The EU is going crazy about ACTA, a similar anti-piracy bill with similar restrictions.
• Twitter is censoring their content, because of copyright takedown notices. They can’t even fight this, there’s nothing they can do.
• On our own home turf, AU is going crazy over Clean Feed. Ours is the longest battle; it’s stalled but still pending. But Clean Feed is about content instead of copyright.
• There’s a group called “Reporters Without Borders” which publishes a list of most Internet-hostile countries. These are all countries that censor the Internet for some reason or another.

We could go like this all day. But all this is squeezing every other kind of news off the web. We’ll try to keep a sunbeam in our corner, though.

It’s easy for us web design folk to forget that to most users, half of what we say is gibberish. Apparently many people can only recall one brand name at a time. So “How do you surf the web?” becomes anything from search engine (Google), to browser (the big blue E), to service provider (AOL), to operating system (Windows). If they remember the name “Google” first, then the whole computer or phone or iPad becomes “Google”.

Remember, we’re not here to snark at those who don’t know as much as we do (quick, what brand of alternator is in your cars engine?), but to inspire developers to work to help users more.

Take a deep breath and check out mute.co.

Things these kinds of clients always tell you:

• “I have a great idea.”
• “This will be good for your portfolio.”
• “When the business takes off, we’ll give you a cut.”
• “It has to integrate with Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Yahoo, and everything.”
• “It has to be a multimedia Web 2.0 experience.”
• “We need it by tomorrow.”
• “Should be no problem for somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

Panda is the update that got everybody’s attention recently (it’s getting so bad, we’re wondering whether people remember they’re not talking about actual panda bears anymore), but how many of you knew about “Big Daddy”, “Mayday”, “Jagger”, “Bourbon”, “Florida”, and “Esmerelda”?

If you note what each update has done, you’ll notice that there is ever so much more to SEO than loading a page with keywords. When you overcome things like high bounce rates, you’re venturing out of the realm of technology altogether and getting into the psychology of users. Now, that’s a subject we don’t see nearly enough ink devoted to.

Our bets on what will pan out:

• Ultrabooks – Hot! They’re just the next generation of laptops, after all.
• Windows 8 – Let’s see, is Windows still relevant? Yeah, for a while. Hot!
• 4K TV – Snoo-o-o-ore! Look, bigger, bustier TVs are just for rich wanks to show off. Nobody else really cares. We still like our black-and-white model with the knobs and rabbit-ears we got in 1955. Buying a $4000 unit doesn’t make the shows any better.
• 3D – Snore. 3D just isn’t here yet. It’s like the flying car from Blade Runner.
• Ice Cream Sandwich – Hot! Brilliant name, that.
• Digital cameras – Ah, yeah, they’re very nice. Sorta hot, but where else can it go now?
• Video content – Hot, but we agree that industry needs to get off the fence and make it more available. Naive international content barriers don’t help.