56 Geeks poster, by Scott Johnson.
I’ll leave to your imagination which 11 out of 56 types I could be associated with.
And by the way, it’s a rhetorical question. š
Blog
-
11 out of 56: Something to Be Scared or Proud of?
-
iTunes Canada Gets the TV Treatment
Patrick Tanguay led me to Apple’s announcement of the new TV programming offering through iTunes Canada.
I have to admit that I share his lack of enthusiasm for their offer… There’s just no way I’m going to spend money on 4:3 ratio video.
All my screens are 16:9 or 16:10: mac laptop, external monitors, iPhone, and so on. And whatever I’ll buy in the foreseeable future will obviously not going to be any other way.
They’re obviously targeting the last two remaining iPod models with such screen proportions, the Classic and Nano, but it’s just not for me. Sorry.
Nice try though. A bit late maybe but nice.
-
Inculcating Basic Human Rights through Comic Books
From Comic books give Kandahar kids insight into basic human rights:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Despite rampant police corruption and a prevailing sense that it will be years before law and order is effectively restored in Afghanistan, a simple comic book is being distributed among the children of Kandahar City in an effort to increase public awareness about the Afghan constitution, civil rights and legal reform.
A joint project by USAID and the Canadian-run Provincial Reconstruction Team.
-
To "Is" or Not to "Is"
To the left, Facebook‘s status edit field in the standard web interface. To the right, the equivalent status edit field, but in their iPhone interface instead.
Spot the difference. š
-
DiSo Is Born. OpenSocial Delayed UntilĀ NextĀ Year.
Ha! I knew I could almost taste the mythical open, decentralized social network of tomorrow. In context, turns out it was the network of the day-after-tomorrow, with Chris Messina posting today that:
Steve Ivy and I have embarked on a prototype project to build a social network with its skin inside out. Weāre calling it DiSo, or āDistributed Social Networking applicationsā. The emphasis here is on ādistributedā.
The initial implementation of the project is built on WordPress, though making clear that this project is intended to be an example whose concepts should be able to be implemented on any platform. Since Steve offers a path to contribute to their effort (see “What’s Next”), I think the floater in my break list might just have found a permanent slot. With a twist and all for the better, so long as I find an area I can effectively contribute to.
I’ve tried to address related subjects on wp-hackers before, but the thread never picked up. The plugin paradigm is always a good approach, and if the implementation solidifies, code could ultimately make it into the WP core. +1 for that on my side! Just visit this very site with the excellent Operator FireFox add-on, and you’ll see what I mean. š
On the other hand, Open Social is now being reported as being delayed until next year:
OpenSocial received a ton of hype when it was announced. Rumors of an early November launch surfaced following Arringtonās announcement of Maki Maki. The announcement turned out to be only that, an announcement. Soon after, I spoke with developers that suggested would open their platform by December 5th. That hasnāt happened either. Techcrunch has pointed to a Google group about OpenSocial in which a Google employee states āThis puts us into January before the API is ready to be implemented by containers, so expect some early adopters to have a public launch early 2008.ā
With so much activity at the standards/architecture level in the identity and social spheres right now, I’m one to say waiting a few months might actually be a very good thing for all involved parties here. A project of Dilo’s scale will thrive on the experimental angle and be malleable enough to rapidly adapt to changes, but OpenSocial is expected by many to be a stable platform to invest in, and has been presented (or represented) as so.
-
The Corporate Art of Concept Bastardization
From GigaOM: AT&T, Verizonā¦We Are All Open:
Ever since Verizon announced that it was going āopen,ā OPEN has become the new buzzword. For instance, this morning USA Today ran a story on AT&T being open, with extensive commentary from AT&T Wireless CEO & President Ralph de la Vega.
It really pains me to see such hypocritical behemoths jump on concepts that are dear to me, such as “open” or “green“, and turn them to their advantage when in reality, they are amongst their most vile opponents.
Between Microsoft’s Open Initiative, GE’s greenwashing campaign and so many others, it’s an ever rising trend, even if far from a new one. Turns out they can’t even be original in their dishonesty: “Hey, me too! I’m cool too! Look at me!“.
But one way or another, analysts and consumers see right through their… uh, spin?
-
OpenID 2.0ā¦Final(ly)!
From OpenID 2.0ā¦Final(ly)!:
While its certainly been a long process in the making, weāre now quite excited to announce OpenID Authentication 2.0 and OpenID Attribute Exchange 1.0 as final specifications (āOpenID 2.0ā³).
See, I told you there was still time (yeah, okay, I wasn’t exactly convincing).
Nice work. The final specs look great, thereby once again proving the old adage true: good things come to those who wait.
-
Filling UpĀ theĀ Break
I’ll be focusing on Plank until the holidays, but I’m already finding myself filling up my wish list for what I want to tackle during the break. Family first, but there’s always a few hours of the day (err, night) to geek it out.
So far, here’s what I have down. Posting it here will give me a push to get it done. š
- New features for WPhone: Viper007Bond, Doug and I are in planning stage for a few nice features we’re trying to deck the upcoming 1.5 version with.
- Setting myself up with an OpenLDAP sandbox for wpDirAuth: when I left McGill, I also left behind the AD install that was providing me with a testbed for my WordPress/LDAP authentication plugin. I don’t mind flying blind with the code, but it’ll help with support.
- Write an app with Symfony: I have a small toy project I want to get to, and I’m planning on using this PHP5 framework as a RAD environment.
- And a few floaters that I haven’t quite officially added to the list yet, like upgrading my site’s theme visually and with data portability in mind, etc.
Bah, with three kids, it’s not like it was going to be a relaxing vacation anyway.
Might as well just add to the fun. š -
OAuth Gets a Release. OpenID, Not So Much…
As Sylvain noted before I had a chance to, OAuth 1.0 was released today. OAuth [probably] stands for Open Authentication, since it is an open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications. I’ve been eagerly following this one for a while now. Fascinating stuff.
Now, should I rub it in and mention that, as expected, OpenID 2.0 did not get ratified at the IIW last Monday? Well, it’s on until tomorrow, so there’s still time.
One common denominator for the two projects these days is the all mighty Google, with the new Blogger In Draft (ie: beta) offering OpenID support, and Chris Messina reporting that the search/ad giant also signed the “OAuth Non-Assertion Covenant and Author’s Contribution License”.
I can almost taste the mythical open, decentralized social network of tomorrow. Can’t wait.
-
Digg Images and New Categories Launch Tonight
From Digg the Blog: Images and new categories launch tonight:
Hey everyone. Believe it or not, the dedicated images section youāve been waiting for finally goes live later tonight. Lots of changes in this release: New universal taxonomy, new images cawler, sorting and duplicate image detection, etc.
I know someone who worked hard on this one, and must be happy to see it go out the door. Nervous, but happy.