Daniel Ho’s Musings

Seeing as an OpenID is just a URI, mine is simply danielho.ca — sweet, eh? (yes, that EH? was put in on purpose to affirm the fact that I’m a crazy Canuck)

This is done through a process called OpenID delegation. Simon Willison’s blog has a good entry that describes all this.

However, for my danielho.ca blog, I used a WordPress plug-in that I found on Another Blog Bites The Dust

It is simple, and best of all…IT WORKS!

What is OpenID?

OpenID is a decentralized Open Source system to verify one’s online identity. Simply put, it is trying to solve the single sign-on problem without relying on any centralized website. The centralized solution has been tried by several companies such as Microsoft’s Passport. The main issue here is that users like me don’t want Microsoft or anyone else owning or storing our login identity or info in its centralized servers. OpenID users identify themselves by using an URI or XRI which they own. In my case, this is my blog homepage here at http://www.danielho.ca. If you don’t own a blog or domain, when you sign up for an OpenID, you will be given a URI such as http://danielho.myopenid.com and that will be what you use to log into various sites.

How does this work?

From Wikipedia (which I know some of you don’t think is a real source of information, but nonetheless, I like it…)

On OpenID-enabled sites, users do not need to register and manage a new account for every site before being granted access. Instead, they only need to be previously registered on a website with an OpenID “identity provider”, sometimes called an i-broker. They can also link to this identity provider from another website they own and log in using that website’s URI instead, allowing them to connect their identity to their website. A website which accepts sign-ins from OpenID is called a “relying party.”

Currently OpenID is being used by AOL, Wikipedia, Ma.gnolia (which I love), and Technorati etc. For a full list, there is a OpenID directory. Heck it is even being adopted by evil Windows Vista

How do you get an OpenID?

There are a bunch of OpenID providers…to get one is FREE. A full list is here. I used MyOpenID by JanRain which is run by a good bunch of geeks out of Portland, Oregon.

What’s this about?

Print out the Bum Rush flyer!

Recently, I’ve been checking out various “social bookmarking” sites. What is this? Well, first think of it as an online store of web links that you can see from any computer that is connected to the web. But, there’s much more…

Social bookmarking allows you to “tag” your bookmark with labels that makes them easy to find again. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand the way browsers make you store your bookmarks in a hierarchical format. What happens when I have a bookmark that is about consumerism as well as parenting–what folder do I put that link in? With tags, go ahead, use both consumerism AND parenting. Crazy, eh? Tags work the same as “categories” that you see on the right hand sidebar of this blog.

Based on the tags or description stored with the link records, you can find not only the bookmarks YOU have stored, but those of everyone else on Ma.gnolia. Through this, you may find some gems that would have taken a LOT of time to discover through trial and error clicking through Google search results.

Of all the social bookmarking sites, I am really digging Ma.gnolia (pun intended). Besides spending the time to design a gorgeous site, Ma.gnolia’s features make it a great place for people to come together to share links.

The most interesting thing about Ma.gnolia is that there is an expressed interested in experimenting with features that will let their community harness its shared assets + relationships and turn it into something more. Where is this going to go? I’m not sure, but I’m interested in finding out. So, I’ll be sticking around to play with the community features and participating.

Ma.gnolia is Highly recommended. Definitely worth checking out. You’ll be hearing more about this from me in the future.

Lately, I’ve been frequently asked “What exactly IS Twitter???”

Well, it seems that Twitter has finally reached quasi-mainstream acceptance. That means that “normal” people are starting to catch wind of it…even those that aren’t geeks and technophiles. In some estimation, this medium may have already “jumped the shark.” In any case, it is worthy of a post before I lose my voice explaining it.

I like it a lot, but even if it isn’t for you, it is worth a read to keep up with all the cool kids are up to. OK, understood that my rock stars may be your nerds, but that notwithstanding…

I’m going to cheat a bit, here’s a blog entry that I heard about from Scoble on Twitter (of course!). It is a good basic primer to what Twitter is all about. Follow the link to the actual post for all the gory details.

If you like, Twitter along with me. My Twitter name is…wait for it…danielho

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Newbie’s guide to Twitter
By Rafe Needleman

Twitter is an online service that lets you broadcast short messages to your friends or “followers.” It also lets you specify which Twitter users you want to follow so you can read their messages in one place.

Twitter is designed to work on a mobile phone as well as a computer. All Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, so each message can be sent as a single SMS alert. You can’t say much in 140 characters. That’s part of Twitter’s charm. ==>READ MORE

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After you’ve read that, come back and read this posting by Julian and this post by Kevin Lim (both also referred by the friendly folk on Twitter.) This should give you a good feel about how Twitter is being used and why people who like it, think it is a big deal vs. being a waste of time.