I was gritting my teeth. It’s either that or smash my keyboard in frustration. I like to think I’m not a complete idiot, but sometimes I feel like I’m missing some fundamental widget in my brain. Maybe I’m just getting old.

I had been reading about Microsoft’s Windows cardspace, and thanks to a helpful little guide here, I created a couple of my own. Any-who, to cut a long story short, I couldn’t get them working – hence the gnashing of teeth.

As it turned out I needed to get an extension for Firefox, as my ever so helpful husband-come-IT-guy pointed out. It makes me wonder how other normal people get on and whether at some point we’ll get to the equivalent of the internet have’s and the have-nots in the form of do’s and do-not’s.

Anyone who has done any kind of user testing of web content or interactive screens will know that users DON’T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. So anything that requires you to read a bunch of guff and follow a pile of instructions and download more guff as far as I’m concerned is not yet ready for prime-time.

And yet as we move into the wonderful world of web 2.0 (who knows what web 3.0 will bring) things seem to get more complicated and the more you have to know about how it all works to make sure you don’t get phished, spammed, scammed, have your identity stolen, get confused, get upgraded when you don’t need to, have your firewall breached or anyone of a gazillion other evils lurking out there.

Ok, glad I got that off my chest. Off to explore something else I barely understand. Nuclear fusion in a bottle – sounds like fun.