OpenID and Leadership

Suppose you believe your web application to have a significant value proposition leading you to request a user sign-up with your service. What should you do?

In 2008 the answer is very clear: OpenID.

"We're taking a leadership role in bringing OpenID to the mass audience." -- Denis Roy, Yahoo! PR

OpenID is about the user. It is about empowering the user to take control of their online identity. Soon, users will be asking for it.

If you really care about your users, OpenID has to be a priority. As with any change, OpenID adoption does require leadership. AOL, Google and Yahoo! are stepping up. If you're in the position of technology education and leadership, better not let this pass you by.

Loving Facebook to Death

by Shooting it to Put it Out of its Misery

JP Rangaswami does some musing on organisations and platforms. He likes airports; they are "open" and "multisided."

Well, Facebook is more like Hotel California.

Last thing I remember, I was

Running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

’relax,’ said the night man,

We are programmed to receive.

You can checkout any time you like,

But you can never leave!

For instance, a user profile has a mini-feed...which isn't a feed at all.

Send a user a message and they receive an email...which tells them they have a message waiting...in Facebook.

Facebook is not unique in this behaviour; in fact, it reminds folks of AOL.

Will we be getting Facebook Floppies in the mail? Probably not. Coasters that look like floppies? Maybe.

The AOL analogy does seem fitting. AOL was very, very popular with the non-tech crowd, and their parents...and grandparents - translated, everyone else but me and my 16550/A UART hunting, starting pppd via chat script, lynx using friends.

Facebook is a destination site for social networking. The F8 Platform appears very well thought-out and, above all, useful. So why polish the brass on the hollow-points? Because it could be more useful. Particularly to me and ~15,000 of my closest friends.

I want to tell folks to use it, but it is not good policy to tell folks -- our users -- to go create an account somewhere else to be able to participate in a core activity. Yeah, the adventurous colleagues signed-up for accounts and we are encouraging folks to enter the razor-wire wrapped FB pages, but encouragement only goes so far (so does telling for that matter :-)...

What would give me pause to put away the heavy artillery? Ah, i have a list! All good bloggers have a list.

1. Feeds - Atom, preferably


2. OpenID - a consumer, that is

Whew. That was tough. I'm tired now. I know i'm asking a lot, but its for the children!?!?

Feeds: Sorry FB friends, but i don't have the time to go to a site to get new information. While FB fires off an email when items are directed towards you, the "News Feed" info is stuck on the FB user home page.

The "News Feed" preferences are awesome. Just make the "News Feed" a feed?

OpenID: This may seem geeky, but it is of utmost importance to the user experience. Two scenarios for asking "User1876, go sign-up at Facebook."

Scenario 1: User must go create a new user account and receives yet another password after jumping thru the email validation process.

Scenario 2: User provides OpenID URL.

Yep, user doesn't have to remember yet another password and a valid email address can be handed off from the OpenID provider too (accepting that will earn you a cookie).

Which scenario would you wish on your grandmother? I have it on good authority that grandmothers love OpenID.

I would love to tell our users to use Facebook. We will be dabbling with some F8 integration with our apps; F8 made Facebook "multisided", but its still closed. Until FB opens up a few more gates, its gonna get the roach motel treatment from me.

I know O(10k) users ain't much in the big picture, but i think a lot of other users would be excited to see the changes too.

AOL eventually opened up...it had to...

But, I think it also says that there is still life in a portal strategy. ;) -- Jeremy Pepper

<sigh>

WordPress 2.1, yawn

The WordPress 2.1 announcement went out. Am i the only one who is unexcited? My first thoughts were a) hope it has Atom 1.0 support and b) probably gonna break all my plugins.

Well its 2007 and it ain’t got Atom 1.0 support yet. <sigh> So i’m not gonna waste my time checkin’ out my plugins.

I’m done with WP at version 2.0.7. Time to move on. I don’t really want to move, but i know running stale code for any length of time means i’m gonna miss security fixes.

I’m torn between moving to vox or Google’s new Blogger; i’ve been swaying back-n-forth. I had considered keeping a WordPress install current and using vox/blogger to generate the content…eh, that’s too much effort.

So where to go next and how do i handle legacy content? I’m now leaning towards Blogger as my new blogging engine. But, where do i put the old stuff? Hmmmm.

Update: so i was a little pessimistic with the stale code, it does say they plan to support the 2.0 line for another 3 years or so.

MediaWiki: Application or Platform?

Had a good discussion yesterday with a coworker regarding applications versus platforms. While the differences are apparent to technology workers, users can be left feeling ignored.

Applications can be designed to be user friendly. Most strive to be and many are usable. Platforms are, well, platforms; a foundation for building around and on top.

MediaWiki really falls into the latter category. It provides a basic interface for content creation and editing and then proceeds to provide an API and hooks for building on the platform. Is the platform usable by itself? Well, Wikipedia seems to be thriving.

Platforms can be extensible in many ways. One of those ways is from within. MediaWiki provides building blocks for users. A novice user can create a page, add some headings and sub-headings, throw in an ordered list and link to other pages using simple mark-up.

What is a user needs to insert a table? More learning must take place. Using templates, some features provided in a third-party extension? … more learning.

It is undeniable that the platform has a longer learning curve; however, the curve can be approached in many ways. Which method is best? I would suggest the desired outcome be considered before just picking a method.

If you do not encourage users to move along the learning curve will they do it on their own? If one ignores the learning opportunities to share with others, how do they learn? If folks only learn the first 30% of the functionality, can one or two people continually pick up the other 70%?

Wikipedia works because many people chose to learn on their own and with the feedback/assistance of others. Many folks have stories about failed wikis; i do myself. When you do the post-mortem you realize, the reason it failed wasn’t the software…it was the people.

Conversely, when a wiki succeeds, it’s not the software, it’s the people.

Have you hugged a wiki user today?

The World’s Most Useful Company?

…consider that Google probably knows more about you than the people who love you, and unlike them, it doesn’t have your best interests at heart. — Shelley Powers

Exactly. And i don’t expect them to.

Go read her entire post, especially if you’re a Googler. Other than the FUD-inspiring title, she outlines the many ways Google may collect data on the users of its services.

I now use many of Google’s services:

• search


• gmail


• calendar


• reader


• analytics


• writely


• spreadsheets


• maps


• groups

The only one in that list i don’t enjoy using is Google Groups (mainly due to the partial feeds). I’ve toyed with Blogger and Notebook. The latter just needs some feeds to be useful.

I know not everyone takes the time to think about what it means to be a user of one of these “free” online services. That’s why i believe Shelley’s post is very relevant. At the same time, i know many non-technical web users who have the view that their personal email, search words, etc. just isn’t that valuable. They are probably right.

Google wants to make money. I want Google to make money so that they can continue to provide me useful services that are free. Google needs users to sell ads to make that money.

Their objective, combined with their business model, means that they must continue to take care of their users; protecting their data and privacy.

In short, Google turns “evil” and i walk. They know i won’t be alone.

Loyalty notice: All my email is mirrored to another service. I download my iCal file and OPML file every night. I export completed docs and spreadsheets to the laptop.

08.31.2006 QOTD

I’ve been rightfully excluded from every technical conference since 1996, so I’m in a poor position to judge whether these peers should form a network. But if they don’t, it may break the lid off the bloody dam of inclusiveness. — Rogers Cadenhead

LOL. I needed that.

Change is Good

Leslie M. Orchard:

In case it’s not obvious, I’ve switched blog themes. This time, it’s a barely-tweaked copy of Sandbox.

then followed up with this:

I can roll my own widgets, and not need to rejigger the main theme and associated templates every time I drop in an update.

I’m in the process of doing the exact same thing. I migrated about 95% of my own theme to Sandbox — still got a few things i’m not satisfied with — and using widgets to replace the custom areas of my theme.

Sandbox is a great idea implemented well. For those with the Firefox microformats extension, the theme sports hCard and hAtom support out of the box.

The only change to the main theme files was replacing the provided 404 page with my own that does a search for the provided PATH_INFO string.

And another thing. I’ve changed aggregators. Yes, again. I went back and gave Google Reader a third shot. This time they got close enough for me to dump reBlog. Development on reBlog seems to be at a standstill. I’m being assimilated by the collective: GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader now have a home in my bookmarks. Though i’m still working hard to avoid vendor lock-in too. As with other online tools, i back-up my feed subscriptions from Google Reader in OPML and Atom formats daily. Same goes for the other services. I can move at a moments notice.

With all the changes, the missing feature i haven’t put back yet is the blogroll. That’ll come back as time allows…

Mobile Interfaces

The habits of the next generation are becoming increasing clear. Mobile computing is how it will be done. The desktop computer has, as Sam Ruby observed, turned into an iPod dock. Yeah, MySpace is “popular”, but the minutes used per day per person is actually pretty low according to surveys (and we know all surveys are true).

When the iPod goes wireless, will the desktop be necessary?

If a mobile MySpace existed, would kids even use computers?

While the former is a foregone conclusion, the latter is a loaded question. Does social browsing lend itself to the mobile platform? Is having an always-on internet connected mobile device sufficient? The entry-level screen for a desktop is now a 19″ LCD. Is the 1.9″ TFT suitable? What about 2.4″? Does it matter? Do kids want a mobile MySpace? Has anyone asked or taken a survey? :-)

Regardless, i believe kids (even the older kind) want basic search and retrieval on the mobile. My wife wants it. She tries to use it and finds the current SMS to Google interface very clumsy. I’ve been out with friends who say, “i’ll look that up when i get home.” Even i’ve said it. Why not look it up now? Having immediate access to information is becoming increasingly valuable to even the casual computer user.

With the Apple iPhone coming December and the Sony Mylo next month, it appears the mobile landscape may have some new landmarks. No need to lug the laptop into the coffee shop to check mail and chat if you got a Mylo. Why curse T9 when you can use a full keyboard to chat with folks?

With wireless growing in the urban culture, WiFi-only tools actually have a place now. Actually, i have a lot of WiFi coverage between my home and work….though not all of it meant to be public. If one can use a Mylo as a media player for travel and to browse/chat in coffee shops and at home, then i think it will be reasonably popular.

Being able to present information to 2″ screen users is important. Sure they can scroll thru a 2MB home page, but why? Is that flash app. usable to them? Is it friendly to the available data rates?

Seems that wireless data plans are becoming increasing popular. Can they get to your data? Can they get to our data? Do they want to? Never mind, that’s another post.

MacBook Pro Withdrawal

After installing the new battery i needed to send my machine back to Apple for some more maintenance. To be honest, we ordered four of these the day they were announced and fully expected some Hardware 1.0 problems. Mine was the third needing a California vacation. Apple’s not perfect. That’s OK.

What was perfect was how long it took me to migrate back to a PowerBook and continue working: 20 minutes. Fifteen minutes to back-up the MacBook Pro (rsyncX script) and five minutes to create an account and copy my home directory to the PowerBook.

In twenty minutes i logged into the PowerBook had all my data, preferences, license keys, etc. … down to my desktop images and everything just worked. Thank You Apple.

Cable TV for Me

Well, well, well. After years of rabbit ears, we have finally entered the 21st century and got cable TV. Basic Cable that is; the $12/mo. version. As much as it pains us to pay for TV, we couldn’t deal with the poor reception any longer. The net of it all, we now have 20 crystal clear stations. Minus the two foreign language ones leaves 18. Can’t really count the ones where they try to sell me stuff, so that leaves 15. The “text” channel is pretty useless and the channel guide is too since we have TiVo, so we’re down to 13 stations. I had 9 stations with rabbit ears and only one of those was spanish. I guess its worth a buck a station per month to be sure we can record Mr. Rogers and Barney daily. The upside is that Lost should be crystal clear too. :-)

I should rant about the fact that it took two technicians over an hour to simply install a splitter at the outside cable box… I don’t understand why technicians insist on trouble-shooting non-problems. I told the guy that the second cable in the cable box outside ran to the jack beside the TV in the family room. Yes, there are three cable jacks in the wall-box, but so? Is it really necessary to spend 20 minutes using your tester to figure out which one it is? Its the one with the signal once you hook it up! Good grief. And the guy put the tone source inside the house instead of putting it on the line outside so he had to keep going in and out of the house to change it from jack-to-jack. And if your gonna go thru all the trouble to figure out which jack is hot, since there were two(!) technicians, you’d think they’d put one of them at each end, right? I routed the signal to the jack in the bedroom myself, it would have probably taken them another hour to do that one…

Ok, so i did rant.

Web Links, RFD

Feed viewers may have noticed a change last week. For several months now i have been using BlinkList to keep up with my web links. I commented about the usefulness of it earlier….

But having the realization that i don’t really need to keep 1300 links around means i will probably keep my eye open for opportunities to improve the workflow for posting links…which is pretty simple at this point, but one never knows.

Since i am now an ecto user, i improved the workflow and removed a dependence on a third party service that i really wasn’t using. Nothing against BlinkList; it is actually one of the better run services i’ve used.

I’m now just using WordPress with a standardized template for tracking links. It lets me post’em, flag’em and search’em; which is 99% of the functionality i need.

I also took the opportunity to actually use one of the features of reBlog that lets one republish articles that are of interest.

Using a simple XML parsing script to grab the feeds from my new link blog and the reblog re-published articles, i’m now posting both to my main feed. I’m still enforcing my own rule (a personal preference) where three links are required to post on a given day.

In the end, i’m more content with the set-up. It works and removes a dependence on a third-party service. For those playing along at home, yes, i ditched my own scuttle install for BlinkList because i didn’t want the overhead of running my own link manager. Since i’m already using WordPress for multiple blogs, this addition adds no more overhead for me personally.

The Amazon S3 BitBucket

I’ve been pretty pleased with the Amazon S3 service thus far. I did go with a python script that uses a very useful library from Mitch Garnaat called BitBucket. I’ve uploaded a version of the script, sans the encryption routine. Perhaps someone will find it useful and extend it a bit. My version is actually similar to the sample script provided, but here it is anyways.

One thing to note: i find it useful to use Debug: 1 in the bitbucket.cfg file. That shows me what was ’skipped’ or ‘added’ between runs.

tag: s3backup

Update: bitbucket was replaced with boto, a Python interface to Amazon Web Services.

On JavaScript and Poor Specs

Andrew DuPont, while helping to make users aware of a common JS mistake, penned these words:

JavaScript started with no specification, then received a poor specification, and I know few people who spend their free time reading specifications. Especially bad ones.

<raises hand> I read specs. While sometimes messing with specs turns into a waste of time. Many times understanding the spec can keep you out of trouble. The problem is that specs are tedious, but the reality is that they have to be. Nothing is worse than a poorly written spec.

Being patient and weeding thru specifications helps you understand not just how something is designed to work, but why. I used to read specs because i had to; now i read them because i want to… even the boring ones.

Bliki Bliki Blog

Jerry Thomas pointed to a couple of articles on a Bliki: Blog + Wiki. After spending several months with the innards of MediaWiki, i mentioned to a coworker that it could make a decent blogging engine. I’ll be adding Atom API support to MW; if ecto adds Atom API support, perhaps it’ll be a match made in heaven.

Yeah, Word 2007 will reportedly have Atom API support too. bleh.

Quicksilver

Mark Jaquith hits the proverbial nail on the head with his note on Blacktree’s Quicksilver.

That is the feeling you get.

If you are a Mac user and aren’t using Quicksilver, you’re missing out. Simply using it as an applications launcher or even an application switcher will get you hooked.

Comments, Adios

Comments here are rare. More often than not, folks usually just comment on their blog and link here. With that in mind, and my time at a premium, comments are gone. In lieu of comments i’ve created a PubSub feed to look for my name or links to this site.

ps. the Contact button works too.

30 Boxes, Farewell

Google announces their new calendar offering. The pertinent questions:

1. Do they support import? Yes


2. Do they support export? Yes

Ok, two more questions:

1. Is it usable? Yes, though i prefer the 30 Boxes interface.


2. Features? They support recurring events of all types, 30 Boxes does not.

With those questions sufficiently answered i imported my 30 Boxes into Google Calendar. Changed my backup script to download the iCal data from Google. Done.

Elapsed time: 15 mins.

Bonus: Gmail integration.

Software Purchases

I don’t buy a lot of software. I generally use the OS provided goodies (a decent selection on the Mac) or open source software. Software i’ve purchased in the last two years includes:

• Apple OS X


• Apple iLife ‘05


• OnSync mobile contacts synchronizer


• ecto


• TextMate

The last two are very recent. While i still tend to use vim for most quick editing tasks, i’ll drop a directory on TextMate if i need to view/modify several files at once. I don’t mind using vim for 3 or 4 files, but 5 or more gets tiresome.

For blog posting, ecto is wonderful. It definitely improves my workflow for handling images and spell-check while you type is dandy too. Highly recommended. Works great with WordPress.

Yep, i’ll be upgrading iLife soon too. I need to do a fair amount of movie import and export to archive stuff to S3. :-)

S3 Follow-up

Looks like i’m getting on the order of 500Kbps during upload to S3. Not bad. I’ve run into two other problems thus far and i think both relate to the S3 Python BitBucket library i mentioned earlier. First, it can’t handle filenames with back-ticks in them. Those are rare and i can fix that myself. But, secondly, i can’t seem to upload a 3.5G file. It bombs quickly after spending a minute-and-a-half calculating the MD5 checksum. :-)

So far 9GB loaded; that’s about 25% done.

Amazon S3 Fun

After much analysis, i decided to go the Python route with the Amazon S3 service. While using curl is appealing, i’d still have to write a driver script with error-checking. In addition to the S3 python library provided by Amazon, i’m using the S3 BitBucket library by Mitch Garnaat. Though i still had to write some driver code to use the library, probably still came out ahead.

It was a little disconcerting to get a ‘500 Internal Server Error’ on my first run; though i wasn’t surprised from reading the forums and blog comments. I was surprised by the performance. In a bad way. I would think that the service would be well connected and upload rates would be quite high. I expected the majority of the application overhead to be the exec call to the md5 program, which is not inconsequential for the number of small files i have. I should do some throughput analysis, but i don’t have that kind of time right now.

Ugh. Just got a second ‘500 Internal Server Error’. Wrote some code to breathe for 10 seconds, then keep going. We’ll see how it goes.