Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Palette
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Sitting across from me again as usual,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. And to all our new listeners,
Speaker 1: hello for the first time, for the last time, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: never again. Let's start off with a little listener mail
Speaker 1: list listener mail poems from Brandon from Iowa City, and
Speaker 1: Brandon says, I just listened to your show about online
Speaker 1: productivity and it made me think of another topic. If
Speaker 1: you haven't done it already, a show about HTML five
Speaker 1: would be pretty interesting. I have only heard a little
Speaker 1: bit about it, but it sounds as if it would
Speaker 1: add some new functionality between the Internet and the user.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the show, but have two suggestions, so
Speaker 1: listen up, Chris. Number one, it is most enjoyable when
Speaker 1: you stay focused on the topic for fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: I'm assuming he means minutes, but I guess we can
Speaker 1: interpret that. However, we like and number two, if I
Speaker 1: fall into the camp of preferring the calm version of
Speaker 1: the listener mail, keep up the good work, Brandon, Brandon,
Speaker 1: Sorry about that, Brandon. Well, Brandon, um, don't worry. I'm
Speaker 1: doing the calm version of listener mail because as much
Speaker 1: as I know the people who who love the old
Speaker 1: version love it, uh, they don't yell at me like
Speaker 1: everyone else does. So and of course, I mean I
Speaker 1: can't really blame them. I I yelled first. So HTML five, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, there almost wasn't an HTML five. In fact,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Let's let's do a little trip
Speaker 1: down memory lane with HTML. We're gonna the actual the
Speaker 1: time machines in the shop, so we're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to take a trip that today. Turns out somebody
Speaker 1: used it to go and mess up the Magna Carta
Speaker 1: sign in twelve fifteen. That was me. Um So anyway,
Speaker 1: so what HTML. Let's let's from the very beginning we
Speaker 1: go back to CERN. Yes, yes, CERN. You know CERN's
Speaker 1: the same r M. Yes, same organization that oversees the
Speaker 1: large Hadron Collider. So when they're not trying to destroy
Speaker 1: the universe, CERN is trying to do I I am
Speaker 1: the first to tell you that the Large Hadron Collider
Speaker 1: is not going to destroy the universe. That was that
Speaker 1: was just a joke. But Tim burners Lee works at CERN,
Speaker 1: and Tim burners Lee is the guy who you may
Speaker 1: know as the father of the World Wide Web. Yes,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of the early development for the
Speaker 1: markup language, the Hypertext Markup Language or h t m L,
Speaker 1: was done at CERN. So for the first couple of
Speaker 1: years really, that's actually for the first i'd say five years,
Speaker 1: that's that's where most of the development came from. UM.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry to go ahead, I'm sorry to interrupt,
Speaker 1: but I was I was going to point out that
Speaker 1: that HTML, UM, there there's actually a markup language that
Speaker 1: predates HTML called s g mL, which is a standard
Speaker 1: generalized markup language. And UM, basically s g mL is
Speaker 1: this really um extensible complex system that allows you to
Speaker 1: define what a markup language actually is. UM. Actually got
Speaker 1: that paraphrase from the W three C But UM, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's serious, it's it's got the ability
Speaker 1: to describe all kinds of elements and things. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think, if I'm not mistaken that Mr burners Lee
Speaker 1: wanted to create sort of a simplified version of s
Speaker 1: GML that had certain predefined elements, because for any version
Speaker 1: of STML, you actually have to explain how the markup works.
Speaker 1: And HTML is a solidified, preset group of of elements, right,
Speaker 1: And it's it's a set of of different tags and
Speaker 1: and ways to describe how something needs needs to look
Speaker 1: that is recognizable universally. Yes, uh, that that was the
Speaker 1: whole point of it. It's a set of standards so
Speaker 1: that everyone can use the same sort of tags to
Speaker 1: get the same sort of effect. You don't have to
Speaker 1: reinvent the wheel every time you want to display something
Speaker 1: on the web. And that's really what markup language is
Speaker 1: all about. It's it's not necessarily the content that you're
Speaker 1: seeing on the web, but how that content is presented
Speaker 1: to you, whether it's in a certain font, a certain color,
Speaker 1: what kinds of images might be there, how the images
Speaker 1: are aligned on the page. All of this ultimately goes
Speaker 1: back to HTML and to an extent, XML extensible markup language. Well,
Speaker 1: XML is also a derivative of s GML as well. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and it is more uh more extensible, but it's it's
Speaker 1: more customizable you can do a lot more with it. UM.
Speaker 1: In the case of s GML and x m L UH,
Speaker 1: what you have to do is you have to, as
Speaker 1: I said before, define what these these tags are. UM.
Speaker 1: They rely on a document type definition or d T
Speaker 1: d UH to some degree to explain UM. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to create your own tag, that's fine,
Speaker 1: but you have to explain what to the computer what
Speaker 1: that tag is supposed to do. Whats right exactly? HTML
Speaker 1: is is basically a set document type definition to where
Speaker 1: there is a certain subset of elements and and tags
Speaker 1: UM that are you know, pre set in the document
Speaker 1: type that everyone can use. So it's not really customizable
Speaker 1: by the end user as much as XML with for example,
Speaker 1: in HTML, B is going to mean bold and slash
Speaker 1: B means in bold and that's that's predefined, uh. Definition
Speaker 1: as opposed to XML, where you could create a tag
Speaker 1: that before you you define it really doesn't mean anything
Speaker 1: at all. It's only after you define it that the
Speaker 1: computer can interpret it and then display whatever it is
Speaker 1: you want, however it is you wanted. UM. Alright, So
Speaker 1: getting back to h T M L, so the first
Speaker 1: few years it's it's over at certain and then the
Speaker 1: the I E T T F then moves to W
Speaker 1: three C once that gets formed, and we get up
Speaker 1: to Worldwide Wide Consortium, Yes, and it's a it's an
Speaker 1: organization UM that works to standardize these sort of things.
Speaker 1: We get up to HTML three point oh uh, and
Speaker 1: then three point two which comes out, and then you
Speaker 1: get H T M L four, which is really pretty
Speaker 1: much what we're using now, and H was supposed to
Speaker 1: have stopped. Yeah, the W three C decided at that
Speaker 1: point that we had pretty much gone as far as
Speaker 1: we needed to go with HTML, and that we could
Speaker 1: if we wanted to go further, or we needed to
Speaker 1: concentrate on other markeup languages, including x M L Y.
Speaker 1: XML was supposed to be the new thing UM. Of
Speaker 1: course it wasn't actually knew at that point, but they
Speaker 1: wanted to transition everybody over to that, and then development
Speaker 1: started on x H T M L UM and everybody
Speaker 1: thought that that was going to be it. But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, UM, some some pretty heavy hitters got
Speaker 1: into UM. The got the idea into their heads that
Speaker 1: they wanted to try to bring back HTML in a
Speaker 1: brand new way when they didn't like X date x
Speaker 1: H t m L as much part of the problem
Speaker 1: was that UM, as as a said in the W
Speaker 1: three C website, uh, XMLS deployment as a web technology
Speaker 1: I'm quoting here was limited to entirely new technologies like
Speaker 1: RSS and later ADAM, rather than as a replacement for
Speaker 1: existing deployed technologies like H T m L, which meant
Speaker 1: that you're just getting you're bulking up. You're having to
Speaker 1: add more and more markup languages to achieve what you want,
Speaker 1: as opposed to revolutionizing the the basic standards so it
Speaker 1: includes everything, and it's more elegant, so it's getting more
Speaker 1: and more chaotic. Uh. And as you said, the heavy
Speaker 1: hitters decided they wanted to go and look at develop
Speaker 1: further developing the HTML standard rather than adding new standards.
Speaker 1: Those heavy hitters included Apple and Mozilla and Opera and
Speaker 1: UM that would be the what w G, the Hypertext
Speaker 1: Application Technology Working Group. Yeah, because boy, if there's one
Speaker 1: thing engineers are good at, it's coming up with acronyms.
Speaker 1: So uh, I'm just kidding. I know we probably have
Speaker 1: some engineers out there, you guys are awesome. Then we're
Speaker 1: going to get into the whole acronym versus yes, I know,
Speaker 1: well what WIG I pronounced it, so it's an accord acronym. Yes,
Speaker 1: it has been acronymified. Now. Originally the w REC had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with HTML five. They were pretty much saying, no,
Speaker 1: we are done. We're not going to do any more
Speaker 1: work on this. You guys go in and do your
Speaker 1: own thing, but we're not wasting time on that. But
Speaker 1: as time went on, the W three C kind of
Speaker 1: the organization reconsidered its position on the whole HTML five question,
Speaker 1: and it was about in two thousand and six they
Speaker 1: said that maybe they did want to kind of participate
Speaker 1: in the development of the standard, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven they formed a group that works with what wig
Speaker 1: to develop HTML five. So what is HTML five all about? Well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of a lot of things on
Speaker 1: the web that you cannot view in a browser without
Speaker 1: first downloading some sort of plug in, right, So, lots
Speaker 1: of video formats, lots of things like that. Um where
Speaker 1: if you were to get a browser, a brand new browser,
Speaker 1: especially in older version that doesn't have these things pre
Speaker 1: built into them, um, you would go to a page
Speaker 1: and it would tell you you couldn't view that stuff
Speaker 1: until you first installed a plug in, and so you
Speaker 1: may have seen this with things like shock Wave, flash players,
Speaker 1: all this sort of stuff. Real player, Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of them, to the point where that's
Speaker 1: actually a security concern because, uh, you know, you might
Speaker 1: encounter a page that tells you there's something on there
Speaker 1: that you can't view because you don't have the latest
Speaker 1: plug in of whatever. But in reality, the plug in
Speaker 1: is not a plug in, it's malware, and so you
Speaker 1: download it and then your computer is corrupted, and and uh,
Speaker 1: you end up looking at the screen and cursing a lot.
Speaker 1: And this happens fairly well frequently, I won't say often,
Speaker 1: but frequently enough where it is a legitimate concern. Now,
Speaker 1: HTML five would take a lot of that worry out
Speaker 1: because it would build into it support for a lot
Speaker 1: of the functions that we see on the web. Now
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily give you support to access those tools as
Speaker 1: they exist, it would kind of recreate the same experience.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying HTML five supports flash. I'm saying
Speaker 1: that HTML five will have definitions in it for web
Speaker 1: video and web animation so that you wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: use Flash, which would be great for people who use
Speaker 1: things like mobile phones, smartphones that don't have flash support.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to build flash support into these devices,
Speaker 1: they would just have to be compatible with HTML five. Well, UM,
Speaker 1: and you really kind of hit on why I've seen
Speaker 1: the probably the biggest reason that I've seen so many
Speaker 1: people excited about HTML five UM. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny to me because you know, I've been using HTML
Speaker 1: um for coding since htmail two, so you know, I'm
Speaker 1: to see the standard change. It really sort of passed
Speaker 1: is without or you know, at least in my experience,
Speaker 1: is past sort of without comments like oh well we've
Speaker 1: got some some new tags. We can go ahead and
Speaker 1: we can add this functionality. UM. But hmail five people
Speaker 1: people are actually talking about it. People are actually sort
Speaker 1: of excited about it. And I think it's the two
Speaker 1: tags that I've seen most people excited about, the video
Speaker 1: and the audio tag UM. And this is basically going
Speaker 1: to allow people to embed multimedia files in the page
Speaker 1: without having to rely on the plug ins, as Jonathan mentioned,
Speaker 1: and and it could. The weird thing about this is
Speaker 1: at least weird to me, is that it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of flexible. You don't necessarily have to have a certain
Speaker 1: type of video, like it's only going to support this
Speaker 1: one there. They're still working on that, and we should
Speaker 1: actually we should have pointed that out probably a while back.
Speaker 1: This isn't a a fully formed specification yet. They're still
Speaker 1: tweaking it and probably will be for a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're working on ways to actually uh embed
Speaker 1: the the multimedia element of a web page directly into
Speaker 1: the HTML. And there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: you'll be able to do with it, um that you
Speaker 1: couldn't do with htmail because frankly, HTML was not meant
Speaker 1: to do what we do with it on the web anyway,
Speaker 1: which is why we have plugins and things like flash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because in order to have the the really rich user
Speaker 1: experiences that we expect on the web, web developers have
Speaker 1: pretty much had to force that into the web because
Speaker 1: the markup language of the web was not designed to
Speaker 1: present that kind of experience to the user. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, through some ingenuity we've when when I say we,
Speaker 1: obviously I don't mean myself. I've never actually developed any
Speaker 1: of these tools, but engineers developed tools that would allow
Speaker 1: you to see things on the web that otherwise you'd
Speaker 1: never get a chance to to get a look at.
Speaker 1: And uh, as we've mentioned before, even even if you
Speaker 1: are careful and you don't accidentally download malware because you
Speaker 1: tried to download a plug in that it wasn't really
Speaker 1: a plug in, plug ins still cause a and they
Speaker 1: can still be a security risk. They can still create
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities in a browser security. So uh, getting rid of
Speaker 1: plugins is kind of a good thing from a security
Speaker 1: point of view. UM, I'm not sure that the companies
Speaker 1: that designed these plug ins would necessarily agree. I wonder
Speaker 1: how companies like Adobe and Microsoft view HTML five, how
Speaker 1: many of them will support that that particular standard, because
Speaker 1: you've got products like Flash, You've got products like silver Light.
Speaker 1: UM these are are in a way competing with HTML
Speaker 1: five or what HTML five will ultimately be, so uh
Speaker 1: and you know, real networks, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: You've got all these different uh UM standards or plugins
Speaker 1: out there that HTML five, if if, if people actually
Speaker 1: adopted on a widespread scale, will effectively replace. Well. UM.
Speaker 1: Two of the formats that I've seen people talk about
Speaker 1: two UM are the OGG formats, which are open source
Speaker 1: video and audio. UM Vorbius is the audio file. It's
Speaker 1: it's more or less, it's not exactly, so don't start
Speaker 1: writing me with nasty Graham's it's more or less the
Speaker 1: equivalent of an MP three file. It's encoded differently than
Speaker 1: an MP three file, and there are no royalties to
Speaker 1: be paid, unlike the case of MPEG one Audio layer three. UM.
Speaker 1: But um, there's also the video file, which is uh
Speaker 1: og theora and UM. A lot of people are saying,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a way where we can
Speaker 1: embed these types of files into an HTML page and
Speaker 1: not have to worry about the licensing fees and and
Speaker 1: all that that that go into uh to creating these files.
Speaker 1: We don't have to do that anymore, UM. And I
Speaker 1: think that's it's gonna bring a lot of functionality right
Speaker 1: to a web page, um, without having to to do
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And that's that's probably the coolest thing
Speaker 1: about it, I think a lot of people for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, once it actually goes into practice and
Speaker 1: there's an adopted HTML five standard and the web browsers
Speaker 1: all support it. Obviously, with people like Mozilla and Apple
Speaker 1: and Opera already on board with the idea in the
Speaker 1: first place, they're going to support it right off the bat. Um.
Speaker 1: But when I'm the average person probably isn't gonna care
Speaker 1: because he or she is not necessarily gonna notice that
Speaker 1: much of a difference, unless they're using smartphones to access
Speaker 1: the web, in which case they're going to notice that
Speaker 1: a lot more websites are UM have kind of content
Speaker 1: features like there. The other day, I was trying to
Speaker 1: look up a restaurant's website on my phone, and because
Speaker 1: my phone also does not support flash, it just it
Speaker 1: came up with the redded broken box with the question
Speaker 1: mark and uh, and that was very frustrating for me
Speaker 1: because all I wanted was to take a quick look
Speaker 1: at this menu, but they had designed it in a
Speaker 1: flash format as opposed to just a regular text format
Speaker 1: or or PDF file or whatever. And uh, to be
Speaker 1: able to access just simple things like that. And that's
Speaker 1: that's not even counting things like web video. Most web
Speaker 1: video I can't view either. I can view YouTube because
Speaker 1: I've got a YouTube application on my phone, but um,
Speaker 1: otherwise I can't view flash based video. And UH, there
Speaker 1: are a lot most of the mobile uh smartphone operating
Speaker 1: system designers are working on incorporating flash, at least on
Speaker 1: some level in their their operating systems. They're working with Adobe,
Speaker 1: but that development is in various stages depending on which
Speaker 1: OS you're talking about, and some of them are dragging
Speaker 1: their heels a lot more than others. For example, Apple
Speaker 1: UH has been notoriously slow to UH to work with
Speaker 1: Adobe to get flash on the iPhone. Yes, but then
Speaker 1: if Apple is really really eager to push the HTML
Speaker 1: five standard, perhaps that's the reason why it doesn't make
Speaker 1: you wonder how that's going to affect UH sites that
Speaker 1: you heavily use plug in features right now? Are they
Speaker 1: going to adjust to HTML five eventually? Or will they
Speaker 1: cling to the old model? Like is YouTube going to
Speaker 1: change over to an HTML five How massive and undertaking
Speaker 1: would it be to switch everything over? We still have
Speaker 1: to have the individual files. Yeah, so it may be.
Speaker 1: It may be easier than you think. We'd have to
Speaker 1: have an insight that we don't have currently into the
Speaker 1: back end how all that works. Um, But for all
Speaker 1: of you HTML heads, people who actually are coding in
Speaker 1: HTML or and really haven't gotten into it, um, they're
Speaker 1: also going to be some they're really nice, um, really
Speaker 1: nice features to HTML five that you didn't have before,
Speaker 1: Like UH, if you've used HTML for, you're familiar with
Speaker 1: the div tag, which is a division basically a section
Speaker 1: of the page. Well, HTML five is designed to have
Speaker 1: to allow to make better specification of of sections of
Speaker 1: the page. They're gonna their tags for, at least at
Speaker 1: the moment in the current specification for things like section
Speaker 1: and header, footer, um, you know, article, so you can
Speaker 1: better have outlined in your htmail document how and where
Speaker 1: you want things to go. Um. And there's also gonna
Speaker 1: be some uh, some other block elements that you're going
Speaker 1: to be able to use to give you better control,
Speaker 1: and even even elements in the middle of a page
Speaker 1: um that will let you highlight things, um and make
Speaker 1: things stand out a little just ways of of drawing
Speaker 1: attention to text that you didn't have in previous versions
Speaker 1: of HTML. Which is U gonna be nice for people
Speaker 1: to to add? Um? I don't know. I guess some
Speaker 1: some depth to straight hetmail because you know, after all
Speaker 1: that that's one of the problems with sites that are
Speaker 1: heavily dependent on things like plugins. I mean, HTMIL is
Speaker 1: not in its current state, is not designed to provide
Speaker 1: that kind of functionality, so they rely on these files
Speaker 1: flash files for example, are are significantly larger than you
Speaker 1: might see a straight HTML file, which is essentially text
Speaker 1: just text. So um, you're gonna be able to add
Speaker 1: that kind of of UM functionality without having to rely
Speaker 1: on larger files. So it probably will help pages load
Speaker 1: more quickly as well. Um, But like I said, they're
Speaker 1: they're still hashing all this stuff out and it's going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit before we know what the
Speaker 1: final set is UM going to look like. They're also
Speaker 1: removing some of the tags, things like strike through will
Speaker 1: no longer be there and the typewriter text um. You know,
Speaker 1: and then you know, hopefully they will there will be
Speaker 1: something that will reach out the screen and punch you
Speaker 1: in the eye if you try to use the marquee
Speaker 1: tag because I'm personally against the market tag, if they
Speaker 1: strike drop shadow from the face of the world, it
Speaker 1: would be awesome, um, which is not really don't write
Speaker 1: to me if you're making a joke, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're not an HTML coder and wanted to know what
Speaker 1: it was, I just said, the marquee tag is that
Speaker 1: tag that everybody started using right after it became popular
Speaker 1: and Internet Explorer where um have you ncoade something with
Speaker 1: the marquet tag. It's the tag that lets text scroll
Speaker 1: from right to laught across your screen, so it looks
Speaker 1: like a newsticker. Yeah, I like the U. I just
Speaker 1: think about those web pages from Cerca I don't know,
Speaker 1: or so animated animated Jeff file, the blank tag, the
Speaker 1: blink tag, the scrolling the MIDI that loops. I mean
Speaker 1: there's no control to turn it off. I designed one
Speaker 1: of those. Yeah, well I think we all did, those
Speaker 1: of us who are doing that back. If it makes
Speaker 1: you guys feel any better, uh to know this, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I did contribute to some of the most awful website
Speaker 1: design on the web back in the early days. But
Speaker 1: it makes you feel any better. It took a lot
Speaker 1: of work to make it that bad, because back then
Speaker 1: you would look at a page of text with all
Speaker 1: these tags around it. You would have to save it,
Speaker 1: then upload it, then open a browser and look at
Speaker 1: it realize that, hey, wait, that's not nearly as hideous
Speaker 1: as I thought it was going to be. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: need to do some more work on this. Close it,
Speaker 1: opening back up, make those changes, save it again. So
Speaker 1: it took a lot of work to really make one
Speaker 1: of the worst web pages ever, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I have to admit back of the day I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. Yeah, I didn't realize it was as
Speaker 1: bad as it was until, you know, years later, when
Speaker 1: I thought back on it and thought, wow, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad I don't remember the u r L for that,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to be able to use the
Speaker 1: Internet archive to find it. Well, I'm interested in in
Speaker 1: actually starting to mess with it once they get some
Speaker 1: free time to Okay, no, there's free time now for me.
Speaker 1: When did we get that? No, But I'm interested in
Speaker 1: seeing how it'll work to actually mess around with HTML five.
Speaker 1: You can, actually, there are some browsers that do support
Speaker 1: some versions of the HTML five code, and you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as it stands now, and you can, and you can
Speaker 1: mess with it some of yourself. If you're interested in
Speaker 1: doing so, I would encourage you too. It's it's interesting
Speaker 1: and fun to to make a web page, even as
Speaker 1: horrible as the ones that Jonathan and I made back
Speaker 1: in seven. We both believe that you guys can do way.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can, and the tools that you have
Speaker 1: in the knowledge that you have far else strips what
Speaker 1: we had to work with. Back then. Yeah, But um,
Speaker 1: but this is gonna be this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: good thing, and I think it's gonna enable more people
Speaker 1: to uh to do more with it, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be more open. Uh they're less you know, fewer
Speaker 1: proprietary standards. More people will support it, which is good.
Speaker 1: I always think that pushes innovation. Well, it's a good discussion.
Speaker 1: Do you have anything else you want to a not really,
Speaker 1: I mean not without getting into the nuts and bolts,
Speaker 1: which can get kind of dry. Um, if you're interested
Speaker 1: in learning more about HTML five, go to W three
Speaker 1: C dot org um, and there is pretty much all
Speaker 1: you can eat info about the standard document on the
Speaker 1: standard really. There's also a good article about it on
Speaker 1: the IBM website that explains some of the differences between
Speaker 1: HTML five and its predecessors. Um, so you know, feel
Speaker 1: free to check that out too, because, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: a little to get into right now, but but if
Speaker 1: you're really interested in it, it may be worth your time. Alright.
Speaker 1: So this brings us to our second round of listener mail.
Speaker 1: This listener mail comes from Elliott who's from Wallington, United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: Do you know what that means? Actually? I'm gonna flip
Speaker 1: a coin. Please don't so heads, it's the fake British
Speaker 1: accent tails. It's normal accent tales. Oh, you guys are
Speaker 1: lucky this time. Uh thank you? Looking to tailed coin?
Speaker 1: What jip? Alright? So here here is the email. Hi guys,
Speaker 1: just finished listening to your podcasts on how social networks
Speaker 1: could be used to affect social change, and was reminded
Speaker 1: of a recent example. Over here in the UK. A
Speaker 1: Facebook group was created to try and make rage against
Speaker 1: the machines killing in the name the Christmas number one
Speaker 1: as as supposed or as opposed I think, as opposed
Speaker 1: to the latest offerings from Simon Kell's X Factor. The
Speaker 1: campaign received a massive amount of national news coverage and
Speaker 1: ultimately achieved its goal, bringing a little bit of rageous
Speaker 1: trademark anarchy to the usually uneventful Christmas chart race Rages.
Speaker 1: Bass Player Tom Morello, already a keen advocate of affecting
Speaker 1: social change, was so struck by the strength and momentum
Speaker 1: of the campaign that he pledged that a portion of
Speaker 1: the money raised from sales of the record would go
Speaker 1: to Shelter, a charity for the homeless that does an
Speaker 1: awful lot for the destitute during the festive period. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: the same rage fans who helped make the Christmas One
Speaker 1: make the Christmas One, We're keen to take up Morello's
Speaker 1: cause and set up a site where they too could
Speaker 1: donate to shelter. To date, they are just five thousand
Speaker 1: pounds short of having donated one hundred thousand pounds, and
Speaker 1: donations are still coming in. Perhaps this is a good
Speaker 1: example of an event that only came about as a
Speaker 1: result of social networking that you were speculating about at
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast. Keep out the good work, guys,
Speaker 1: cheers Elliott, and uh, yeah, it's a pretty good example.
Speaker 1: I did right back to Elliott and explained that you
Speaker 1: know that that kind of started off more as a prank.
Speaker 1: It was more of a almost like a protest, saying
Speaker 1: that these were people who kind of opposed Simon Cowell's project,
Speaker 1: and you know that's what that represents. Interrupted I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to the vibe I was getting to when I
Speaker 1: saw that on there was they were really trying to
Speaker 1: see if they could mess with it. I believe this
Speaker 1: is what my English friends would refer to as taking
Speaker 1: the pit of something. Um. They were taking the pit
Speaker 1: out of Simon Cowell's X Factor. So the idea here
Speaker 1: is that they were just kind of fumbing their noses,
Speaker 1: but it ended up being at an event that did
Speaker 1: create social change. Um, it's not really what I was
Speaker 1: looking for as a good example simply because it didn't
Speaker 1: start out that way. I'm so certainly glad it ended
Speaker 1: up that way though. So that was an excellent email.
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