That dynamic duo Tara Hunt and her PiC Chris Messina have got me thinking. They've been talking about web applications starting to move to the desktop. Okay, that doesn't seem so interesting, desktop applications are like the oldest things there are. But we've learnt some lessons from web apps that we can try to bring back to the desktop.

Tara asks:

I sync my iPhoto with Flickr and Riya - but why couldn't I store all of that data on my desktop?

Chris sees web apps coming to the desktop more literally:

I'm seeing a third generation stack emerging that holds a great deal of promise for sewing up the future of offline-sync-online experiences.

That stack looks a bit more like Rails, SQL Lite (which the next rev of the Firefox bookmarks will be based on), Microformats, some blend of JSON/AMASS/jQuery/behaviour.js/scriptaculous/prototype and, yes, WebKit. What do they have in common? Well, enough inter-woven stickiness to make the heart of a true web geek start to murmur.

This got me thinking about something nobody really talks or cares about anymore: peer-to-peer.

Why doesn't every computer on the web run it's own web server? If you want to share something with the world (photos, music, a blog, etc.), you put it on your personal web server and people come to you.

Try to do this today. I ran a web server off my own computer for a few years in University.. that is, until the assholes at Rogers Cable told me to block port 80 or they would cut off my Internet service.

Okay, I understand the logistical problems here. Even our high-speed Internet connections couldn't handle the bandwidth issues of a busy web site, let alone a dial-up connection. And we would have to leave our computers running all the time. We would also need a static IP or heavily use dyndns.com, plus I can't picture average Internet users configuring their router to port forward to their personal web servers, nor configuring Apache. Not to mention the security implications.

Okay, it sounds like a bad idea for 2006. But I'm talking about the future of the web here.

Eventually, I hope, our current bandwidth will be as funny as 2400-baud modems are to us now. Eventually, perhaps, IPv6 will let every device have a static IP so we won't have to hide behind our routers. Eventually, when a web server becomes as easy to set up as a web browser, we will find them in every household. Eventually.

I just heard about Swift (via Chris Messina). Swift is a port of WebKit for Windows. WebKit is the rendering engine behind Safari (in the same way Gecko is behind Firefox and Mozilla). So I figure, sweet! Safari for Windows!

I had some problems though. On one of my PCs, WebKit.dll couldn't be registered so the installation failed. Weird.

On my other PC, I got Swift installed no problem. I ran it and.. well.. let's just say it's clearly Alpha software. Not only is the user interface extremely bare minimum (you're not going to make this your default browser any time soon), the functionality is a bit iffy. For example, it crashed when I clicked a normal link.

Perhaps it will help you see how WebKit will render your page.. but I wouldn't rely on it. I had a password field go missing, and buttons are styled with CSS whereas I'm pretty sure they aren't in Safari.

It seems there is also a problem with JavaScript. JavaScript executes, sometimes, but I had a problem getting popups to launch, or to load my new Google ads. Okay, maybe you won't miss popups and ads, but what else will break?

I give massive kudos to WebKit and Chris Fuenty for putting this together. It's not there yet, but I can't wait until it is. Having a port of WebKit on Windows will help web developers without Macs immensely. Maybe one day Swift will even become a major player in the browser market.

As I warned yesterday, I've put ads back on the site. Currently, I only have them on the individual blog post pages (the pages that have comments on them). If you only read from the home page, or if you read via RSS, you won't see them.

I also walked my own talk by letting people turn off the ads if they wish. I did it entirely with JavaScript, so I thought I'd share my methodology with you.

The HTML just looks like this:

<div class="ads">
    <script type="text/javascript" src="banner-ad.js"></script>
</div>

And the JavaScript in banner-ad.js looks like this:

/* Customized Google Adsense codes */
google_ad_client = "pub-3809601305027895";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as";
google_ad_type = "text";
google_ad_channel ="8087340205";
google_color_border = "99bbee";
google_color_bg = "99bbee";
google_color_link = "000000";
google_color_url = "000000";
google_color_text = "000000";

/* cookie functions from QuirksMode */
function setCookie (name,value,days) {
    if (days)
    {
        var date = new Date();
        date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000));
        var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();
    }
    else var expires = "";
    document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/";
}

function getCookie (name) {
    var nameEQ = name + "=";
    var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
    for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++)
    {
        var c = ca[i];
        while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
        if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length);
    }
    return null;
}

/* onclick function to remove ads */
function removeAds() {
    /* set a cookie for 10 years to stop showing ads */
    setCookie('hideads', '1', 365*10);

    /* hide every div on the page with the class name 'ads' */
    var ads = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
    for (var i=0;i < ads.length;i++) {
        if (ads[i].className == 'ads') {
            ads[i].style.display = 'none';
        }
    }

    return false;
}

/* don't show the ads if the cookie is there */
if (getCookie('hideads') != '1') {
    /* write out the link to hide the ads */
    document.write('<a href="#" onclick="return removeAds()">Remove Ads</a>');

    /* write out the regular Adsense script tag */
    document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>');
}

When the 'Remove Ads' link is clicked, the ads are instantly hidden using CSS and a cookie is set. Next time this script is loaded, as long as the cookie is set, the ads won't be written to the page anymore.

Pretty much the only comment/form spam I get is of the variety that ends with:

Best site in bleep! My thnx to webmasters.

The rest of the message is usually different. Two recent examples are "Excellent site you have! Awesome content. Thank you." and "Thanks for nice and actual info' Be the Best!". These examples don't have any URLs in them, but many often do. I suspect the ones without URLs are a sort of ping/robot system that is going around testing for new places to submit.

The "From:" address is fairly consistent as well. It's nearly always from a mail.com address, though there are exceptions such as a recent one that came from [email protected].

What is this spam?? A search on Google only comes up with fellow blogger John Bokma's site, plus 37,800 other pages probably containing actual comment spam. John has logged a ton of different URLs and IP addresses of this spammer (nicknamed "Bleep"), and has concluded Bleep is actually comprised of a small botnet. He also describes Google's apparent inaction towards stopping this spammer on Blogspot.

I have a theory that Bleep isn't just a single spammer, but perhaps the default output of some kind of comment spam software used by hundreds of different spammers.

I'm rather interested to get my hands on some comment spam software - not to actually spam but just to see how the thing works to get some ideas of how to fight comment spam - but it seems impossible to find it. Searching on "comment spam" just brings up web pages against spam. Plus, I'm pretty sure whoever writes the software wouldn't name it "Comment Spam 2000" or something. It probably has a name like "Web Advertiser 2000" that makes it sound not-so-evil.

Does anyone have any info on this Bleep bot? Or any ideas of where I can find comment-spamming software?

I mentioned in my review of dict.cc that I loved the ability to turn off ads. Unfortunately, now that ability is gone. There used to be is a large Adsense banner across the top of the page with a link to "Remove Ad". When you clicked the link, the ad would disappear. I guess it used a cookie to remember your preference so that the next time you went to the site, the ads would be gone. Now, there are just ads on the side with no way to hide them. Update: the banner and Remove Ad link is still there, just not on the home page!

The ability to disable ads is great from a visitors perspective. People already use adblock software to block ads that they don't want to see and will never click on. Allowing visitors to customize a web site is not only helpful but generous as well. This also solves the dilema of sites which want to make a bit of money but don't want to ruin the experience of their loyal visitors.

On a related note, I'm thinking of bringing back the Adsense ads (with a Remove Ads link) to see how they peform. I had taken them off back in December when I was only making a few cents per week, but my traffic situation has since changed. If anybody has any objections, speak now or forever hold your peace. :)

Update: I've put back the ads with a 'Remove Ads' link, and wrote a follow-up explaining how.