New Developments
So much news is around that I will skip the “Useful Links” fun this time and get you some useful info instead. To start with, you may have heard of the issue of net neutrality, which is beginning to heat up again due to the upcoming election. The definition follows: “Net neutrality is a principle that bars Internet providers, primarily phone and cable companies, from charging higher rates to Web-based firms in return for giving their content priority treatment on the pathways to consumers.” *
Democratic presidential candidates, unlike their Republican counterparts, have endorsed net neutrality. Bloggers** and other Internet activists are pushing for net neutrality, and Democratic candidates would be attacked by these groups if they did not favor net neutrality.
Telephone and cable companies, on the other hand, oppose net neutrality. They say they need flexibility to manage Internet traffic, even if it means eventually charging higher rates for priority service.
The upshot of all of this is that the access to your website could be slower than that of your competition if you don’t pay extra for priority service. The net would no longer be “neutral”, and the small business person could be at a disadvantage
*From: Neutrality on the net gets high ’08 profile
By Charles Babington—Washington Post
** (from Wikipedia) A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media. The term “blog” is derived from “Web log.” “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Remember talking about Digg.com? Well, on Feb. 1, 2007, Digg’s Kevin Rose announced that they were removing the list of top users from the Digg site. That was caused, at least in part, by the possibility of someone buying favor from the top users to get a better position on the stack. There are ways around the removal of the user IDs, however. For instance, Digg competitor Netscape compiled a list of the top users, and Digg still showed the ranking for each user on that user’s profile page. All you had to do was scan the user pages to find the top users.
A Wall Street Journal article called “The Wizards of Buzz” (Feb. 12, 2007) focused on the power of the top users of Digg, Netscape, and other “social bookmarking ” sites. The gist of the article is that sometimes 12 year olds are helping to define what “news” is. Hmmm
From TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/) and other sources.
On Feb. 20, Digg’s Kevin Rose announced that Digg will adopt the OpenID decentralized digital identity platform later this year. Already Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, LiveJournal, and Wikipedia have announced support for this initiative, so it looks like it will be happening.
OpenID is an “open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.” It starts with the concept that anyone can identity themselves on the Internet the same way that websites do, with a URL (web address). Instead of creating a new username and password every time you go to a new site, you will have a single ID. The site will redirect you to your OpenID provider to login, and then you’ll gain access when you are authenticated.
OpenID is not intended to prevent spam or to create a “trust metric”, so it may not address the user problem Digg has been facing recently. It should, however, be a more sensible and organized way for web users to identify themselves. Instead of having an array of user IDs and passwords, one would only need to register on a website with an OpenID “Identity provider”, sometimes called an i-broker. It would also be possible to use the URL of another website that you own and use that ID.
There is no provision for authentication with OpenID, so it is not meant to provide protection for banking or e-commerce. However, with added “strong authentication” , which uses more than one factor to authenticate (i.e. credit card and PIN) OpenID can be used for all types of transactions.
From TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/) , http://openid.net , and Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID
Yahoo! Pipes
In Unix terminology, a “pipe” is a conduit for the transfer of data between applications. The new Yahoo! Pipes is a conduit for data between web services. In its basic form, Yahoo! Pipes allows you to take data from one or more sources and to bring it together—to aggregate a group of feeds.
But Pipes also provides functions, or modules, that will perform a variety of actions. Because of the already broad base of functions already available, Yahoo! Pipes is more like a shell scripting environment for the web rather than just a conduit between applications.
The application itself is beautifully simple. It can take any feed as input, and it can then sort and filter it for desired results. The output can then be received in a variety of formats. Many pipes already exist, and they can be used as base templates for a pipe you create.
If creating your own pipe is a bit over your head right now, don’t feel alone. It’s over my head too. Still, it’s good to know about such technological innovations and to “get some on you”. A good start would be to explore the pipes that have already been created.
If you don’t have a Yahoo! Account, just create one at the following link:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/edit/
At the very top of that page is a link to sign in or to sign up. You’ll use the sign up if you don’t already have an account.
Once your account is active, follow the link below for “Pipes”:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/
On that page, choose “Browse Pipes” on the top left to get a listing of pipes that have been created. You’ll find pages and pages of “Most Frequently Run Pipes”. Choose one that interests you and click on it. Then choose “View/Edit” beside “How this Pipe was Made”. If you aren’t logged in to your Yahoo! Account you’ll be prompted to do that, then you’ll be taken to a schematic of the pipe you selected.
I chose “Techcrunch Citations” on the first page. On the top of that page are all the “URL Builder” blocks that feed the information through the pipe. You’ll notice that most of the addresses are for some sort of news site or blog. Most of them “query” for “techcrunch”. They all feed in to the “Fetch” module. Click on the question mark at the top of the “Fetch” box for a description of what that module does. This pipe has a filter (Unique) that combines items containing identical strings.
Below the “Unique” module is the “Pipe Output”. Click on that and you’ll get a list of titles with the related URL’s below. You can drag the arrow at the top of the articles to expand the window showing the list, meanwhile overlapping the schematic of the pipe. Click on the article to see the source, description, etc. It seems you have to copy and paste the URL into your browser to get to the original article. You can “Save a copy” and that pipe will show up in the “My Pipes” section so you can easily find it again.
There, now, you’ve gotten it all over you and it didn’t hurt at all. Keep poking around and some of it may begin to make sense!
Adapted from TechCrunch
(http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/07/hahoo-launches-pipes/)
Yahoo! and Wikipedia
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