Disqus - Latest Comments for Mike West

Re: carlo.log → Jabber, OpenID And “teh shiny”

Mike West — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:54:49 -0000

Good article, Carlo. Nice work.

I think you're overlooking the single best Jabber client I've found: Adium. Sure, it's only available for OS X, and since it connects to every IM network I use anyway, there's unfortunately no distinct advantage I'd get by Jabbering instead of Y!Ming or AIMing. This is, of course, part of your point. :)

That said, I think you're exactly on target with regard to your questions about why these protocols haven't captured the public's imagiation: in short, the public has no imagination when it comes to _protocols_. The fact that Skype took off has nothing at all to do with the backend communication layer, except insofar as that layer was better at getting through firewalls than anything else on the market. People used the protocol, not because of the _protocol_, but because of the _feature_ the protocol enabled. When you say that Jabber will take off as soon as it has a client with some killer features, I don't think that actually says anything about Jabber itself: you're simply arguing for a shinier _client_. If Y! implemented the killer "Smilmiis" (How's that for a name? :) ) in Messenger, people would use it. If AOL did the same, people would use it.

It's clear to me that unless the killer feature is something Jabber can do that those other protocols _can't_, it won't make much difference. The central problem in bringing a brand-new client to market is the absolutely stunningly huge installed base. I use Y!M to talk to you guys at work, I use AIM to talk to all my friends in the states, and I use MSN to talk to one idiot who only uses it because that's what everyone at his office uses. But I'm a geek! Most people wouldn't bother setting up a whole new client to talk to one person. Unless Jabber hits a big tipping point (maybe Steve Jobs will make it the official client of the iPhone?), I don't see how it will get enough market penetration to matter much at all.

Also, OpenID is cool. A single point of sign-on _is_ a killer feature, and it's slowly strengthening it's hold on the minds of amazing developers. When sites like LiveJournal are pioneers of a technology, I don't think it'll be too long before the _functionality_ (if not the _protocol_) is on the lips of a good chunk of bloggers. Whether it hits the mainstream or not is entirely dependent on how widespread the client support for OpenID becomes. It's one thing to make _getting_ an ID easy, it's quite another to have enough _use_ for that ID to make a difference in the market.

Also, my OpenID server apparently doesn't like your website. It checks out fine from openidenabled.com, but throws an error here. I'll fix comments on my site if you fix comments on yours. ;)

Re: carlo.log → Social whitelisting with OpenID, my take

Mike West — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:14:05 -0000

It absolutely makes sense to me that if whitelists should be automatically collected and parsed, they should be autodiscoverable. Having a distinct URL would solve that problem, but I think the solution would be fairly inflexible in a number of ways (not least of which, linguistically: what's "whitelist" auf deutsch?).

You're already adding the `openid.delegation` and `openid.server` lines to your site every time you change the theme, right? Pasting in another line specifying the `openid.whitelist` doesn't sound like much additional effort. This could even be abstracted from your site's HTML using YARDIS, meaning you wouldn't have to change any template code at all; great, right?

Re: carlo.log → Good bye, Media Temple

Mike West — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:51:51 -0000

I've heard great things about ASO. It's usually the host recommended on the Textdrive forums for people for whom Textdrive is somehow unsuitable. So, good choice, I guess. I'll be interested in hearing how it works for you.

Re: carlo.log → unset(Perl)

Mike West — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 04:56:28 -0000

Trim = `sub trim { my ($string) = @_; $string =~ s/^\s*(.+?)\s*$/$1/; return $string; }`

switch... that's a little tougher. how about the "cannonical":

SWITCH: for ($variable) {
($variable eq "thing1") && do {
do_neat_stuff();
last SWITCH;
};
($variable eq "thing2") && do {
do_more_neat_stuff();
last SWITCH;
};
...
}

Ah, perl... :)

Re: Child’s Play 2008: Germany

Mike West — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:31:11 -0000

Sorry to hear that it didn't work out, Carlo. But, honestly, I think it's absolutely great that you've tried. Best of luck for next year. Sounds like you'll need it.