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<dateCreated>Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:25:48 GMT</dateCreated>
<dateModified>Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:36:01 GMT</dateModified>
<ownerName>Tom Morris</ownerName>
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<body><outline text="More Harry Potter analysis - &lt;a href=&quot;http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2007/07/the-moral-and-p.html&quot;&gt;Linda Grant on the moral and political philosophy&lt;/a&gt; in the books." created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:25:48 GMT"/>
<outline text="Facebook vs. the Internet (or Thoughts on the Future)" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"><outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.snipperoo.com/2007/07/facebook-it-w-1.html&quot;&gt;Ivan Pope&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;There just are no sophisticated tools in Facebook - everything is like a shallow version of what we're used to on the outside. For sure, the apps have started to put some depth back into the system, but it's hard to imagine that we'll en masse abandon our email and our IM and our other contact and memory tools and use the stubs that Facebook offers.&quot;&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="Ah, but you don't get it, Ivan, it's what the thirteen-year-olds use, and so we have to respect it. After all, their poetry and taste in music is so good that we have to respect their choice in roach-motel web applications. The latest craze that seems to be addictive to the blogosphere is equating &quot;popular&quot; with &quot;good&quot;.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="Facebook is the modern-day BBS, only without the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/30/bbs_splash_banners_f.html&quot;&gt;hacker&lt;/a&gt; charm of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system&quot;&gt;the original BBSes&lt;/a&gt; (I caught the tail end of the BBS thing, but I do remember logging into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pdsl.com/&quot;&gt;PDSL&lt;/a&gt; - a local free software distributor run out of this guy's house - to get a set of ASCII files listing their CD-ROM catalogue - nowadays we just use BitTorrent instead).&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="The social networks I like all allow you to distribute things far and wide. &lt;a href=&quot;http://del.icio.us&quot;&gt;Del.icio.us&lt;/a&gt; has plugins for Firefox, plus an API and RSS feeds - meaning I can easily get hold of data that I've entered and reuse it. The same is true for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com&quot;&gt;Flickr&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://last.fm&quot;&gt;Last.fm&lt;/a&gt; and many other services. If I put it in, I can get it back out again with some ease. They literally are small pieces, which I can tie together in new and interesting ways. Facebook is an island.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="Take my blog as an example of portability. Since it's all just a bunch of XML files, it took what amounted to a few days of programming in order to write a new version of it.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="There's this really cool network that I've found. It's kind of like Facebook. You can link up with friends and chat. You can express yourself - post audio, video, text, photos or teeny little status updates. It's called the Web. Facebook is just a distraction. Let's work harder to build a better Web. That means getting the standards in a fit shape. That means finally cracking the Semantic Web. That means even greater innovation with &lt;abbr title=&quot;Cascading Style Sheets&quot;&gt;CSS&lt;/abbr&gt; and JavaScript (I think I'm getting to grips with the former, still got some way to go with the latter). It means finding better ways of doing things. &lt;a href=&quot;http://semwebdev.keithalexander.co.uk/blog/posts/mvc-not-designed-for-the-web&quot;&gt;Keith Alexander&lt;/a&gt; is, again, right about this one - MVC will have to give way to some kind of pipelined, semantic &lt;em&gt;thing&lt;/em&gt;, the details of which currently elude me. More importantly, it means more focus on the user experience and on decent interface design, accessibility and usability. I say those because, while they aren't a total fit with my region of interest, I appreciate the importance of them and the huge value they play on the Web.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="What else? Encryption. I think encryption is still completely under-explored, and it's something that the masses &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to jump on to. Mass use of military-strength encryption provides herd immunity against ever-insane levels of government surveillance. Strong encryption will be to the digital realm what muskets were to those pesky eighteenth-century New England upstarts - a continuing guarantee of freedom. Geeks need to lead by example on this front. If you need any more convincing, go read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html&quot;&gt;Why I Wrote PGP&lt;/a&gt; by Phil Zimmerman. This is &lt;em&gt;important&lt;/em&gt;. Rather than lusting after iPhones, it's something that the technically-minded folks can do to actually make our ever more repressive socities freer. Google are holding out reasonably well. Other web companies are not doing well at all. That means you, Yahoo! Grab yourself &lt;a href=&quot;http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/&quot;&gt;FireGPG&lt;/a&gt; and route around these inconveniences on the route to a free Internet.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/><outline text="Because that's what it's about. The Internet. The Web. That's what all this TechMeme, Wall Street nonsense is avoiding - that this is the Internet, and &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; can be routed around if a couple of clever geeks get together and build it." created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:22:31 GMT"/></outline><outline text="VerifyID - verify your OpenID" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"><outline text="Following on from GPG key-signing, I came up with an idea - using OpenID for tying real life identity to online identities. How? Well, imagine this situation. You are at a pub, and you want to prove to someone that you are who you say you are online. You hand them some kind of device - perhaps an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/iphone/&quot;&gt;iPhone&lt;/a&gt; (or more realistically, any mobile phone, PDA etc that has an Internet connection).&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="They go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://verifyid.opiumfield.com&quot;&gt;VerifyID&lt;/a&gt;, log in with their OpenID and hand the phone back to you - confirming that they are who they say they are.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="But what if your OpenID provider doesn't work on the phone? Well, you can use another one. With such a dizzying array of services, you can always find a provider that'll work. AOL works for me.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="But then, how do you tie OpenID A to B? Well, another simple answer - you go to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jyte.com&quot;&gt;Jyte&lt;/a&gt; - where you can login with your primary OpenID, and 'claim' all your other OpenIDs by logging in with them in the 'edit profile' screen. I've got &lt;a href=&quot;http://jyte.com/profile/tommorris.org&quot;&gt;lots of them&lt;/a&gt;.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="When you log in to VerifyID, it'll pull a list of your OpenIDs from Jyte.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="But how do you make sure that they haven't just written a script to make it so that when you login to VerifyID, it just mirrors what it says on the page and passes it through. Well, we have implemented a session identifier - a three letter character that should appear both on the login screen and the screen once you have logged in! It is possible that you could fake that too, so we have another line of defence.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="And it's a strange one. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.twitter.com&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, Twitter. If you go and follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/verifyid&quot;&gt;verifyid&lt;/a&gt;, it will allow anyone logged in to send you their OpenID identifier. And if they have more than one, it will append an asterisk to the direct message. You can then go to the Jyte profile for that OpenID (jyte.com/profile/ followed by their OpenID) to get a full list.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="Total time to build this? Maybe one hour.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="Will anyone use it? Dunno.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="Will anyone find it valuable? Dunno.&#13;" created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/><outline text="But it was fun. The visual look will improve when I am in HTML-CSS mode." created="Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:35:59 GMT"/></outline></body>
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