Disqus - Latest Comments for Chris Messina

Re: Great (web) designers write code

Chris Messina — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:56:32 -0000

So are you going to be able to make it down? We'll need your heckling to keep us honest! ;)

Great post.

Re: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Chris Messina — Tue, 15 May 2007 05:14:09 -0000

I certainly congratulate you on finding new work.

At the same time, your choice of employer is unfortunate. Or rather, I should say, the actions of your new employer are leading me to consider banning future contributions from Microsoft to the BarCamp community-at least while these kind of actions are still their preferred modus operandi. Funny how one act by Chairman Dickhead Balmer can undo much of the good and generous work that his community ambassadors have done over the last year.

In any case, I still hold a great deal of respect for you, but I cannot say the same thing for Microsoft. I wish you the best of luck-and intend to keep a close eye on you-because ultimately you're still one of us, even if you've decided to play patsy with the Dark Side of the Force.

Re: WOW! me

Chris Messina — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:56:27 -0000

+1. Bug ups.

Re: The perfect customer interaction support tool

Chris Messina — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:06:52 -0000

Dude, use Satisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com

And you're done! ;)

Re: The perfect customer interaction support tool

Chris Messina — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 02:34:44 -0000

Argh, I should have read more closely. Maybe they'll do a private white-label?

Re: Introducing TwitterDroid

Chris Messina — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:20:20 -0000

Nice work! ...is the source available anywhere? ;)

Re: New Feature: the Wesabe Automatic Uploader

Chris Messina — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:36:45 -0000

This seems the ideal use case for OAuth between Wesabe and third parties... I bet banks probably haven't heard much about OAuth, but have you guys done any work to talk these companies about moving to delegated token-based authorization to avoid the need to use, as you pointed out, your actual bank credentials when performing such transactions?

Re: New Feature: the Wesabe Automatic Uploader

Chris Messina — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:32:04 -0000

Thanks Marc -- I agree that convenience is key. I also figured that it was only a matter of time before you started storing user credentials on your end -- with competition from Mint (who dispensed with the whole password problem by accepting any credentials whatsoever!) you have to keep up with that kind of straightforwardness even if teaches people the wrong behavior. The fact that the industry hasn't sorted this out yet is a huge opportunity, and I'm happy to hear that you're continuing to promote OAuth.

I was thrilled to have your participation in the initial work on the OAuth spec and would love to support your work with banks and financial institutions however I can. It really is better for everyone to move in this direction; with choice comes competition, and with competition comes improved service and motivation to serve better. That's something that I think needs to be considered when putting the idea of data interop and portability into perspective.

Re: My blog is my social network

Chris Messina — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:58:48 -0000

Heh, Mr. Tara Hunt. I love you Canadians! ;)

Srsly though, I'd be interested in your thoughts on the project; it's literally neo-natal right now, just beyond a sparkle in anyone's eye. Still, I think it raises the issue about what social networking might look like if it never *started* as a bunch of silos... I'm going mostly on a hunch that being able to have the choice between joining a big silo or rolling your own social node is something that would be good for the current state of affairs, since currently we really can't say, with any credibility, that running your own blog today really puts you in league with the social dexterity of the mega social nets.

Re: Why that new Flock rocks my world…

Chris Messina — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:51:00 -0000

@Brandon -- Flock is a web browser based on Firefox, so it's unlikely it'll ever morph into an AJAX driven website. ;)

On the contrary, the original idea and goal of Flock was to build a browser that treated people as "first class citizens" through unifying your social connections from various web services. A simple website would find this very hard to do, since you'd have to login against every remote service within the remote website; Flock OTOH is your browser, so it naturally is able to "see" every site you login to and then pull in your connections from it. It's kind of like a social proxy that then builds a smart interface on top of those connections.

As for using it everyday, Flock intends to become your regular browser, so it's even more natural than having to pick a default webpage that you visit every day.

Then again, I can't really speak to their long term objectives; I helped start the company and then lead the initial interaction design and visioning but am no longer directly involved.

Re: Ten “Move to Wordpress Self-hosted” Tips - Part II

Chris Messina — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:01:05 -0000

Thanks for the pointer Lou! Also note that in newer versions of WordPress (maybe 2.2 on) widgets are now included in core and don't need to be installed as a separate plugin.

Great idea about setting up the separate "beta blog"... hadn't thought about that one!

Re: The Difference Between Screen Capture and Webpage Capture…

Chris Messina — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:08:39 -0000

Actually, the best tool for full-page screenshots, especially with Safari, is Web Snapper. It's not free, but the shortcut key (command-shift-E in Safari) makes it worthwhile!

Check it out:

http://tastyapps.com

Re: Facebook Launches Amazing New iPhone Application

Chris Messina — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:45:30 -0000

Hey Scott, I compiled those screenshots into a set that you should link to (instead of my "facebook" tag in my photos).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/sets/72...

Re: Simple Spark: 5000 Web Apps in 333 Seconds

Chris Messina — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:18:40 -0000

This is either a great example of the importance of good logo design or its proof that logo design is a fleeting art.

Re: Twitter at Burning Man 2007 | Laughing Squid

Chris Messina — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:31:50 -0000

Heh, I tend to agree with Mike and Lord Kook that this probably isn't the best context for Twitter... and that much of the digital life should be left behind when heading off to BM. Tara and I were more or less able to ditch our social media addiction on our trip to Hawaii and even just proving to ourselves that we could "put the mouse down and walk away slowly" was reinvigorating.

Now, upon your return from BM, I've proposed a way to handle this idea of Group for Twitter with what I'm calling Tag Channels... You can read all about it here. It is a long post, but I'd love feedback on it.

Re: The WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin Rocks

Chris Messina — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:56:26 -0000

It doesn't touch your templates... but if the underlying WordPress software changes, you might need to update your template.

Re: Flock is not a flop

Chris Messina — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:20:09 -0000

No worries -- great to see that, with all the changes at Flock (including my departure some time ago) the new team has really executed on much of the promise in the original vision! ;)

Re: hearts on sleeves

Chris Messina — Wed, 23 May 2007 21:55:45 -0000

Hey John, I think you're right --- for the most part. I certainly could have framed my thoughts in a more productive, less accusatory manner; for better or worse, as I said in the video, I tend to be harshest on the things I care about most. I also threw that video together in those 50 minutes -- no prep beyond the IM conversation I'd had earlier in the day... and I'm glad that I got it out there, "ums" and all since I've been working on a follow-up post and I'm about a week late on that because I'm trying to actually self-edit and be a little more reflective. Ppff. Oh well.

As for folks taking things personally -- I think that's okay as long as they can detach their ego from the feedback. It's not helpful when folks lash out because they don't want to hear the feedback, whether true or not, simply because they have a weak ego. Many folks actually responded directly, in very open, honest and constructive ways, and I was thrilled to have that kind of feedback. It's really changed my thinking and alerted me to things that were invisible to me.

At the same time, now that these issues are out there, I'm still having a hard time tracking the conversation. It's like I feel like a lot of people have been talking about this stuff, but besides a couple dozen posts from a small subset of authors, I've not seen the widespread discussions that I've seen mentioned a number of times. That suggests to me that there is still an underground current of conversation that is not being aired and could be put out there more prominently.

So, I'll attempt to get my post out there sooner than later; the longer I wait, the more stale it gets. And I appreciate all that you've added to the discussion so far; it's certainly been helpful and refreshing.

Re: this is supposed to be a good thing?

Chris Messina — Wed, 23 May 2007 22:18:48 -0000

This is particularly freaky given David's post.

Re: Messina and Firefox

Chris Messina — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:04:25 -0000

Ah, David, this is a great post, and I hope the folks at Mozilla get a chance to read it. I'll be writing a follow-up post soon, but this really gets at the spirit that my rant was after -- it certainly wasn't aimless anger or indirected frustration, but a plea for answers and for a sense of what's Mozilla next Big Idea™ is!

To be fair, I have received quite a few comments and have had some discussions in the past few days that have enlightened me about the state of things -- and about what's going on.

There is still a great deal of work to be done, all the same, and I think, as a community, we must really take the growing threats seriously (IP law is one of these) and respond to them in due measure. It's not that Mozilla isn't up for it or isn't the organization that I'd want to represent me in the fight, but that I want to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to ensure success and that the web stay and become more open.

Re: The Open Web is a social movement

Chris Messina — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:13:25 -0000

Hey David, this is a great post and I generally support your theme and premise.

I did want to clarify the point you made about my "Leave Britney Alone-esque" rant... specifically: "that a major motivating factor for his rant was an effort to bring attention to his new consulting firm".

I mean, it's okay for folks to think what they want about the comments I made. But it's another thing to re-interpret the intent of my post. I think promoting my company was the last thing on my mind -- and in fact, I hesitated to post the thing in the first place out of concern for how it might come across.

Anyway, it's no big deal, and you don't have to believe me, but it's just laughable (to me at least!) that I would waste 50 minutes at 1am decrying what I felt was Mozilla's lack of direction to somehow promote my company. I mean, I spent 9 months working on Spread Firefox for free, and then I went on to help found Flock, which was built on the Mozilla platform... I was seriously concerned about Mozilla's potential ability to preserve the freedom of the Open Web if they didn't wake up and counter proprietary technologies like Silverlight and Air...!

So that's that. Otherwise, great post. ;)

Re: Cuppadev » OpenID in RailsCollab

Chris Messina — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:12:00 -0000

Awesome to hear that you've added support!

You should also take a look at OAuth... "OpenID for APIs" in a sense... or a kind of generalized FlickrAuth. We've been building this out for the last several months to solve problems that both Ma.gnolia and Twitter have had in either getting OpenID to work on the desktop side (Ma.gnolia Dashboard Widget support for OpenID) or on the API side (Twitter's various mashups that ask for your Twitter username and password).

Basecamp currently exposes a limitation of OpenID in that it assigns you a username and password to access your protected RSS feeds... instead, Basecamp should grant external applications a token that allows for user-controlled access to their data. OAuth provides the protocol to solve that exact problem.

http://groups.google.com/group/oauth

Re: Will you be my friend?

Chris Messina — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:21:37 -0000

Sweet! I hope you join in the conversation... oh, and don't forget to take the first step by installing the wp-openid plugin on your blog! ;)

Re: WordPress Automatic Upgrade 1.2 Release

Chris Messina — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:39:09 -0000

Any reason why 2.6.2 isn't being detected by WPAU?

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/09/wordpr...

Re: Blogrolls and Friendships

Chris Messina — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:47:09 -0000

You should check out the DiSo Project (http://diso-project.org). We're taking this basic concept, mixing in OpenID and building the components for decentralized social networking on top of projects like WordPress and Drupal.

Re: privacy on the open web

Chris Messina — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:57:14 -0000

I think there are a couple factors here.

First, one of the problems will not be about achieving privacy; it will be about getting heard in the din of democratized technology. When everyone's publishing, how do you rise above and get your ideas heard? This is a fundamental shift -- one that's quite unintuitive for previous generations who felt that anonymity could provide protection.

Second, the web needs to invert itself from a service-centric world where you must repeat your identity on all of them to a user- or citizen-of-the-web-centric orientation. This is what technologies like OpenID are all about... can you define yourself as the primary authority about yourself without relying on a third party service? You should be able to -- but today we know people by the services they use, rather than by the multi-faceted individuals that they are (potentially with accounts across multiple services).

Third, one thing that we need to begin to cope with — or adjust our expectations about — is the concept of decay, which of course is absent from digital technology where everything is designed to persist, perhaps, indefinitely. What does it mean when you can connect with your preschool friends on Facebook after you've graduated from college? Would that be a meaningful or useful relationship? Would such connections crowd out more happenstance but possibly deeper relationships that might spawn from random associations, or by affiliating oneself with people with similar interests.

In other words, we live in a time of information and social abundance; the same assumptions that worked in a time of relative isolation and desolation should no longer apply.

I've written about these subjects previously. Might interest you:

http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/06/11/thoughts-...
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/11/11/privacy-p...
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/06/05/privacy-w...
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2006/01/24/pry-to

Re: 8 Awesome Firefox Plugins for Twitter

Chris Messina — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:32:52 -0000

Don't forget to check out the wiki!

http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps

Re: 2007/06/01/spyjax/

Chris Messina — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 00:48:20 -0000

This is actually pretty old. As of last August, someone else was pushing around this trick. It's clever, but not that bigga'deal. Unless you disable the ability the differentiate :visited links, this hack will persist.

Re: 2007/08/20/windows-live-web-id-authentication/

Chris Messina — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:10:24 -0000

Microsoft committed to supporting OpenID. Is this effort compatible or in conflict with that?

And, why don't you support OpenID on Mashable.com?

Re: 2007/10/16/slashid/

Chris Messina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:08:14 -0000

From a brief glance, it almost seems like these guys implemented OAuth. Weird. It also has a significant SPOF: "It is only possible to de-centralize SlashID when the system stops relying on Javascript issued from our website. This will happen when browser plugins or core browser modifications which support our protocol are widely available. Until then, the system must remain centralized."

I'd rather stick with OpenID where it works and use 1Password in the meantime.

Re: 2007/10/30/california-quake-twitter-first-take-cover-later/

Chris Messina — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:41:09 -0000

Check it out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/1807201...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/1806388...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/splat/1806353675/

Twitter > MSM.

Re: 2008/08/26/openid-resources/

Chris Messina — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:24:53 -0000

Also take a look at Demand OpenID (http://demand.openid.net) -- a site for publicly declaring your desire for OpenID support at your favorite sites! There's a simple bookmarklet that makes it easy to add the worst (best?) offenders!

Re: Need Google Apps on Your Desktop? Try GMDesk.

Chris Messina — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:36:07 -0000

I'll stick with Fluid (http://fluidapp.com) and Mailplane (http://mailplane.com)

Re: 2008/08/30/mashedlife/

Chris Messina — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:22:25 -0000

I definitely prefer 1Password. This service just feels odd to me.

Re: HOW TO: Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 Minutes

Chris Messina — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:49:38 -0000

"Here's to keeping the web more open and more social". What a way to end it.

Still, this makes it look mindnumbingly easy. Wow.

Re: Gender WTF: I thought we were discussing the laptop?

Chris Messina — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:04:21 -0000

+1. Srsly...

The web definitely has pockets miserably unfriendly to women. Teh sigh.

Re: iPhoneDevCamp, WordPress, and Sandbox

Chris Messina — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:01:26 -0000

Hey Bill, this is great. I hope to release my work on this problem soon -- but I need Joe Hewitt's help in making some improvements to his iUi library. I'll definitely give a look at your work and see if I can add anything.

Re: Independents Hall starts materializing

Chris Messina — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:07:19 -0000

Wow! That site looks awesome! Nice work Alex!!

Re: exPhone.org is live!

Chris Messina — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:35:56 -0000

Hey Alex, thanks a ton for throwing down with me on this one -- I definitely couldn't have finished it without your help -- and I think the Lifehacker pickup was thanks to your awesome work. Cheers dude!

Re: off for the weekend. oh yeah, and that other thing…

Chris Messina — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 19:37:38 -0000

I ... quad?... what everyone else said! Congrats dude -- you're going gangbusters down there and it's awesome that you're setting an example by still making time for the more important things in life. ;)

Re: The East Coast Revolution - SocialDevCamp East

Chris Messina — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:51:02 -0000

Ha! How did that happen? That's hilarious man -- I think you should be happy that you don't find out about these things like I do -- clearly I spend far too much time on the intertubes!

Anyway, I totally support this idea, and is definitely in line with my earlier hopes for coworking -- leading the way to a truly global network of innovators doing cool things from wherever they want to be. It's also a necessary aspect of evolution and diversity that people come from all over and work on interesting projects... hell, the customers of tomorrow's technologies are certainly not all in the Bay Area -- why constrain the problem/opportunity space to only things that concern them?

Keep me posted on outcomes from this event. I won't be able to make this one, but I'd love to have an excuse to head back East again in the next couple months!

Re: The Web 2.0 Expo experience

Chris Messina — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:07:38 -0000

We certainly all had a great time -- and it was good to get to hang out and get a sense for where Viddler's headed -- I definitely dig V2.0 and am glad I got to chat with you about it.

Oh, and thanks for the write up -- I know I won't have time and this captures it really well.

A few points of clarification, Tara Hunt (as well as Tara Anderson -- aka Tara 2.0) did a ton of work behind the scenes as well. Make sure she gets a hat tip.

Our French sponsor was faberNovel/AF83 (not faberLove) though you got the link right.

Anyway, keep us posted about the NYC party! We'll be heading that way soon enough!

Re: Ramblings in response to Viddler ramblings

Chris Messina — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 21:56:34 -0000

Hey Colin, lots of great stuff and thinking here -- especially around the UVTA. I know lots of folks operate purely in a mimicry mode and that's where risk taking and independent thinking really get sacrificed.

I'm glad you took the time to really address Mike's comments given his effort in writing them up. I like the how Viddler could response/react to his ideas and am looking forward to being able to directly link frames to external URLs instead of using comments! ;)

Re: Recollecting BlogPhiladelphia

Chris Messina — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:32:25 -0000

Hey man, don't forget CreativeCamp -- Philly's original "unplanned conference". Alex Hillman can tell you more about but BlogPhilly wasn't exactly the first. :)

Re: Apple’s iPhone takes Flickr top spot among camera phones!

Chris Messina — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:25:49 -0000

Good find dude! That's *really* interesting!

Re: The best of 2008 as told by me

Chris Messina — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:12:36 -0000

Yeah, I'd second those. ;)

But I think FriendFeed deserves a mention for something.

Re: New Theme, New Look

Chris Messina — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 18:24:34 -0000

Like it, but your link blue and your header blue are different... the text column is also too wide and you need more line-height!

Otherwise, big improvement!

Re: My Three Words for 2008

Chris Messina — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:09:58 -0000

These are great, Chris. I especially like "idea handles" (in loops) and considering which crops to cultivate (in farm). I also think that I could spend more time closing loops that I start since, like yourself, I seem good at getting things off the ground, but less good at keeping them in the air over sustained periods of time. ;)

And, did you miss the #themeword mini-meme? Check it out:

http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2008/01/02/kicking-o...

Re: Open vs Closed

Chris Messina — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:30:51 -0000

This is certainly something that I'm personally sensitive to, and think that it'll take something of a generational shift to get towards better-design open platforms. One of the things that "open" tends towards is the "middle", since, in order to get more people to contribute, you've got to make political compromises in order to gain a wider following.

Oftentimes this means adding more and more features rather than cutting (or, in writing terms, "editing"). I think a balance between app- and plugin-based platforms is necessary, so you need to find that sweet spot between meeting the baseline needs of a wide audience (motivating developers to want to build on your platform) and providing enough surface areas for devs to hook into that they can build satisfying extensions (see Firefox, Ubiquity and/or Adium).

That said, design succeeds where there is a vision that is checked against a broad reality. I think Apple is succeeding here, and happens to provide a built-in income model as well (whereas the Mozilla community does not).

Worth considering, for sure.

Re: BarCampBlock

Chris Messina — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:22:43 -0000

Hey Nat, great to meet you and thanks for your help setting up the grid!

I encourage you to follow up and start your own *camp event down in your local community... there's also Coworking that you could look into -- both are really great ways to connect with folks around you.

The evangelists from Microsoft were Anand Ayer and Jas Sandhu.

Anyway thanks again for coming and pitching out! Glad you enjoyed yourself!

Re: Taking a Stand to Promote OpenID

Chris Messina — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:49:16 -0000

+1 dude. I support ya! ;)

Re: Steps in Launching a New Blog

Chris Messina — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:58:26 -0000

Nice to see OpenID on that list! ;)

Re: Prehistoric GMail Message

Chris Messina — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:40:23 -0000

Cool -- thanks for reblogging!

I might suggest adding the #gmail hashtag just to make people's replies easier to find!

http://hashtags.org/tag/gmail/
http://twemes.com/gmail

Re: Prehistoric GMail Message

Chris Messina — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:46:29 -0000

Looks like a better hashtag is:

http://twemes.com/GmailTwitterMeme

Re: Your Passwords Are Sold. And Plaxo?

Chris Messina — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:13:55 -0000

I'd like to give John the benefit of the doubt, not just because we're friends, but because I know how long and much work needs to go into getting large organizations to shift.

That said, I agree with Jeremy's point with two additional questions and one statement:

1. What's the delta between how things are today with your scraper and getting to a point where you can simply use PoCo? If you're waiting on the service providers to adopt the protocol (clearly it needs to get finished in the mean time!), how far away are we from seeing live support? Two months? Three? Six months? Perhaps providing a non-binding timeline, and the things it depends on, would help to assuage these claims of hypocrisy. At least you're doing something about it.

2. Why don't you at least offer optional support for the delegated authentication protocols provided by all of the major service providers in the meantime? At least the solutions exist today and would show a genuine commitment to making it possible for people to have control over how they provided access to their data.

3. While I'm an advocate against the password anti-pattern like the rest of you, I do think that giving up your account credentials to sites and companies you trust is not always a bad thing. It certainly isn't an ideal solution, and in fact makes for lazy developers, but if you trust a company, say, with your credit card number and secret code, that's hardly different than trusting a company with your email credentials. If people make an informed decision about trusting Plaxo and hand over the keys to their accounts, that's their decision. How they become informed, is another topic, though — and the greater point about teaching people bad security hygiene still stands.

Re: The MacTouch/MediaPad/iTablet/iPad/Rumor#3 is fanboy fiction until I see one

Chris Messina — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:43:33 -0000

Well, I actually still find it interesting — though occasionally banal — if only because Apple continually inspires people to imagine out loud "What if Apple did X"... Because of Apple's success and brilliance in their approach to design, they inspire people to imagine all kinds of interesting things.

If other companies inspired similar thinking, I think we'd be the better for it.

As you said, if you think Twitter is boring — it's because more companies don't make us sit back in wonder, pondering what magical thing they might come up with next.