I haven't even started looking through this properly yet, but Patrick just brought to my attention the results of the A List Apart Web Design Survey 2007 and it's a great read so far.

Being the unwilling complainer and non-supporter of discrimination (either the negative or the positive types), I'm always especially interested in those bits of data referring to us ladies, and these are some items that have caught my eye so far:

• Women perceive a high level of gender bias in the industry than men do (but only 22.3%).
• The number of people (male & female) who think there is definitely not a gender bias in total is a huge 63.8% (only 1.7% think there definitely is one). It's important to note the tone of this was to "ask specifically if the respondent feels that his or her career has been impacted by bias, not whether the respondent perceives there to be discrimination in the field".
• Women have around the same or higher salaries than men in the industry (highest in the $20,000 - $79,999 salary range).
• "In general, female respondents who work full time do not seem to make less than male respondents who also work full time, and in fact may earn a bit more. This pattern can be seen in Fig. 3.5., “Salary range by gender,” in Section Three.".
• "A greater percentage of women than men believe they lack a needed back-end development skill (Fig. 10.3)." (28.8%).

I'm not sure exactly what to say yet, but it certainly supports some thoughts I have on the matter of women in web development. I think there's always been a lot of talk about discrimination specifically within our industry (dare I even mention the matter of female speakers at conferences, or the lack thereof?) but with very little data and evidence to back up various arguments. I'd like to see some well formed discussions come from research like this and I hope to do just that as soon as I've digested the information and done a little more background work.

So I bit the bullet about 2 weeks ago and signed up to Facebook. Why? Well, I have complained about how much I dislike the entire thing for at least the last 6 months (if not longer) but it was rightfully pointed out to me that I cannot complain about something of which I have had no experience of. Well, I've got 2 weeks of experience now and this is what I think.

I spent the first 48 hours or so quite addicted to it, adding everyone I ever knew ever as a friend and having fun setting the details on how I met each person. I've just gone over 100 friends and my ego is satisfied. Great. It's kind of cool to say "Hi" to someone I've not hung out with for 7 years, but after the "Hi" that's about it. It's a bit awkward. Is this because I'm a bad person with no social skills, or did we just stop hanging out for a reason?

Then, I had fun adding a few of the applications. Connecting myself up to a few of the sites I actually DO use on the 'net (flickr, upcoming, dopplr, etc.) so that in theory I could show those that cared (who does?) what I do on other sites or more likely, I could pretend/brag to myself and others that I have a life outside of Facebook. It's a bit of a one way street. Just dragging in stuff from other sites to display in another place. I can't push much back out to those sites though. This must be the walled garden I was hearing about.

As I was locating and finding applications, I discovered that other people had slightly less useful, but more personally interactive apps., and I love a good excuse to fill out a survey to see which Pokémon I'm most like or which film star I'm most likely to marry. General time wasting. I can compare my film tastes with my friend? Sounds like potential fun and conversation. OK... oh wait, I've got to add this piece of crap to MY profile as well just to do this? Erm... no. It appears that to interact with anything you've got to also say you want to use it too. It's viral in a bad, forced way. Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough, my inbox is now filled with requests to try out just about every application my awful friends have decided is fun today (I'm turning off all notifications I can as I pause from typing).

The search. The most irritating search I've ever used. Just to say certain names are pretty common. I can only search with more attributes if the person I'm searching for is in a network that I belong to. That seems a bit ridiculous. I have friends that aren't in any specific network, or I associate with a group of people too small to require their own network. Yeah, I can try and find people from my IM listings (that's useful) but if a friend is unfortunate enough to have a common name, and not be listed with their IM details, it's virtually impossible to locate them unless you find them on a shared friend's list or you ask them (but if you're using Facebook to get back into contact with old friends, it's possibly safe to assume you currently can't contact them).

So, I really am failing to find an actual use other than for time wasting and ego-boosting. I'm quite nosey, so I suppose I do enjoy seeing who's just fallen out with who or just started seeing someone else etc., and I do like friending people I haven't spoken to for ages just because I want to see where they're working or if they're still with so'n'so. It's passive gossip and I like that. It's the same reason I like Twitter, but at least it's not as nerdy.

I also am reasonably keen on having all of my contacts in one place. Granted, most of the people I really want to talk to I already have in my phone book or on my IM or (heaven forbid) I see them regularly, but it is valuable to have a centralised list of people from various networks. I haven't figured out WHY yet, but I can see a time when I might want to organise something or announce that I'm emigrating to Mars and it would be a lot less hassle for me if I can just mass-spam this information to everyone I've ever met.

At the end of the day though, I'm bored of signing up for networks. This is a fad. I think I said MySpace was a fad too and refused to sign up to that, and that's fallen away to be replaced by Facebook (and dare I say it, but at least MySpace was helping to expose some musical talents, if nothing else). Something else'll be along and I'll be complaining about that this time next year too. Someone please tell me why "this is the one"?

Can't I just have one home and this can be it?

I have apparently forgotten that I wanted to have a site to blog because I have stuff I wanted to say. I haven't blogged for over a month because I've had no where to do so because I was waiting and hoping that Luke would get things up and running again soon. It's just too long and I shouldn't rely on freebies. So, while I sort out proper hosting with customer services who'll rightly hear my wrath if things break because I'm paying for the pleasure, I've set up home here. Priority one is to blog.

I am taking recommendations for hosting though, if anyone has one.

Dear Readers,

I apologise for the downtime. This was due to an effort to create a more reliable experience for you. Packets were lost and words were exchanged between the server that shall not be repeated, but replacements have now been found and something like a normal service will now resume. Thank you for your patience.

Yours truely,

Frances

In other news, I have finished one job to start another in my absense. The brief version is as follows;

Having spent almost a year and a half at Volume and learning as much as I could and generally having a pretty good experience, I thought it was about time to move on. Kind of an odd time to do so in hindsight, because as I was leaving they were just picking up into a new phase and have a shedload of work (this is a good thing) and new clients. I’m sure they’ll do well.

<p>Fortunately, the opportunity to do something new came my way and I can now be found loitering at the <a href="http://bbc.co.uk">BBC</a> as a client-side developer.  I’ve been at the BBC a week so far, and am pleased!  I can’t imagine I’ll blog anymore about that than I did the last job mind you, so this is just an “FYI”.  </p>
<p>I was sad to leave <a href="http://www.paulcripps.co.uk" rel="friend met colleague">DJ Pauly C</a> who was the most active in making my stay  at Volume enjoyable, but I’m sure he’ll forgive me in time.</p>

Last week I attended my first ever @media. After offering to pretty much sell a kidney to go last year, I was extra chuffed to get to go and help out too! Plus, it was a double treat for me in that I got to see the results of Patrick’s hard work over the last few months (which I’ve somewhat had the pleasure of seeing from behind the scenes) as well as of course having the opportunity to see a host top presenters.

Highlight for me? Joe Clark, easily. I like his take-no-prisoners attitude and that he speaks his mind. I gather a few people may not agree with him, but that’s cool - I think what he does especially well is just give you another point-of-view to look a problem from and encourages you to really evaluate what the real issue is.

<p>I also enjoyed <a href="http://www.allinthehead.com" rel="friend met colleague">Drew</a> and <a href="http://www.colly.com" rel="acquaintance colleague met">Colly</a>’s High Noon Shoot-out.  Not only was it funny, but it did have an underlying point that compromise and knowing your audience is really important. </p>
<p>I’m really want the podcasts to be available <strong>now</strong>, because I never remember to take any notes.</p>
<p>Ah, but the best bit is that the @media fun does not end there.  <a href="http://www.vivabit.com/atmediaajax/">@media Ajax</a> has been announced for later this year in November!</p>
<p>Best swag of the event?  My personalised <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dexterperrin/537446975/" title="Link to a photo of my awesome shirt with ptg and paul"><strong>green</strong> @media logo shirt</a>, of course.