David Christiansen | davidchristiansen.com

The OpenID levees break: Everyone’s OpenID accepted on Facebook

David Christiansen — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:14:45 GMT

Facebook will momentarily add yet another feather to their bow by becoming the biggest example of a social network accepting OpenID from other companies.

It is maybe now, more than ever we should expect websites to care more about verifying the age and identity of their customers – now that one of the largest in the market has widely accepted a technology that makes asserting verified claims SO easy.

Lions and Tigers – End of Safari evaluation

David Christiansen — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:37:20 GMT

So today see’s the end of my week long attempt to use an online bookstore search in replacement of my habitual use of Gooooogle.

All in all it was a relative success. We were certainly able to find the topics we were looking for – but as expected, Safari was able to best answer questions on ‘best practise’ and ‘how should be approach x’. Where Google steps forward was exposing the real world experiences actually implementing those practises, thanks to the world of Blogging and Forums.

Has to be said I found the interface to be simple. I don’t think I would ever be able to sit and read a whole chapter let alone a book. I wasn’t able to achieve the ‘flow’ otherwise experienced by reading a book or web page. Having to set the page Zoom each time became rather irritating after a while but I was able to find the information I required – answer the question – and move on.

I would LOVE to be able to flip pages using my cursors, rather than my mouse. I would love to see all the pages of a book laid out on a ‘whitebox’ table in some kind of deep-zoom visualisation so I can see all the headings, sub heading, illustrations, to mimic what you would do by the ‘flicking’ through a book.

So, will a Safari subscription kill my GoogleAmazon addiction. No, not yet. Besides, I can’t take Safari to the ‘john’.

This curiosity was satisfied thanks to my friends at GeekWithBlogs.net and Safari Books Online. Thanks very much guys!

Update:

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For a limited time, Safari Books Online is offering GeekswithBlogs readers a 15 day free trial, plus a 15% discount on a monthly subscription for a full year. Learn more and start your free trial at:http://www.safaribooksonline.com/geeks/mobile/?cid=200904-my-geeks-blog

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OpenSocial – Being forward, to move the social web forward …

David Christiansen — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:52:55 GMT

Signing up to OpenSocialthis afternoon I found that their registration page shows a woman being a bit more sociable than I was expecting. Not sure how this constitutes toward ‘Moving the social web forward’ – but she certainly is.

On a Safari…

David Christiansen — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:36:37 GMT

I recently was provided with an evaluation of Safari Books Online and will be experimenting for the next week or so using it as a replacement for the instinctive response to goooogle for the answer to “How do you do <whatever>?” questions.

Thanks to GWB and Safari for the opportunity to give this kind of research a try.

Security Question

David Christiansen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:59:02 GMT

Courtesy of XKCD