Aspherical Boundaries

Like most Internet users, I am plagued by the Multiple Sign On problem. I’ve got a username/password pair for GMail, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, my blog, my Coppermine gallery etc, etc. Trying to manage all these is always a bit of a handful, especially for those I don’t use often. Most sites makes it a bit easier nowadays by using an email address as your user name, but it is still a bit of a pain in the ass.

Most of the big names on the Internet has been trying to unify the logins for their services for the past while, as long as you stick to one brand, it works. For example, a Google Account covers you for GMail, Google Docs, Picasa, Blogger, Youtube and many others. Similarly, your Microsoft Live account covers you for MSDN, SkyDrive, XBox Live! etc. etc.

Howevery, you are still tied to one company for each login.

It was a pleasant surprise when I came upon Stackoverflow a while back. It is a batch of new websites using the OpenID system for logging in.

OpenID has been around for a while now. It is, unsurprisingly, an open standard for various sites to supply your login information, and thus online identity to each other, done with your consent of course. This means that once you are logged into site A, instead of logging into sites B, C and D, you can simply ask them to check with site A with regards to your identity. This is definately a move in the right direction toward the Single Sign On.

A side effect of more wide spread Single Sign On would be that it discourages internet anononimity. If people are using the same identity on multiple sites, they are more invested in that identity. This may be a good thing or a bad thing. However, I do think this will close the gap between acceptable behaviour in real life and online. That means less trolling and better YouTube comments! (Ok, I can dream).

In fact, a surprising number of sites already offer OpenID, including AOL, Microsoft, MySpace, Yahoo and most recently, Google. Chances are, you already have one OpenID… or five. In fact, this poses a problem as most of the big names are happy to supply you with an OpenID, but does not want to accept it, or be the “Relying party” as the lingo goes. This means you are still sitting with a handful (instead of a bucketful) of accounts. Furthermore, the fact that you already have so many OpenIDs is itself a problem, as there is no way to merge two IDs.

Google and Facebook have also introduced their own take on the Single Sign On problem. Google Friend Connet and Facebook Connect are services offered by two of internet’s biggest brands to users to use their logins all over the internet. In one sense, this means that Google and Facebook want to become the identity brokers for the internet.

This is one area when you don’t really want too many choices. The network effect is very real here. What we want is a handful of logins that potentially covers everything. (Note that I say potentially because you should still have the option of having unconnected accounts for privacy reasons). The situation will only get better when the big names start accepting each other’s logins. We want to arrive at a situation where your Google login is your Yahoo login.

The current state of affairs means that it’s a lot easier to post on werid forums you come acros without having to register a new account, but you still need a few “Big” accounts.

Update:

I just sorted out OpenID for Aspherical Boundaries… Looks like I was really late to the party :P.

Let me start by saying that I never learnt much about how websites work. I know some basic HTML and know about CSS. I have some idea about what Javascript and PHP do, but never touched any of it.

Despite this, I have built a small number of sites over the past 7-8 years, starting with a little two-pager for CS class back in high school. I started in notepad, and moved onto DreamWeaver, but still building static pages, from scratch. Every time, I would have two things on my mind:

• I need to learn to do this properly;
• There’s got to be an easier way…

Needless to say, I never learnt anything about CSS or HTML. More importantly I guess, I know nothing about good web design.

Why do I blabber on about my boring experiences of making websites? I suspect it is similar to many people’s site building experiences. Looking around the web, It would appear that the vast majority of sites are static sites hacked together in an afternoon. Most of these are once-off sites, and are no longer updated. However, there are those too that are continuously updated into gigantic sites. Of the photography sites I visit often, numerous ones fall within this category: Ken Rockwell, Naturfotograf, ByThom and the monstrous Photography in Malaysia.

These hacked together sites are generally usable, though most have poor design. More importantly, they require immense dedication to maintain for the often one-man teams that runs them.

When I finally gave in to the blog, and started playing around with WordPress, I realised that there is very few situations when someone actually needs to build a site from scratch anymore. Just as most developers don’t write their own linked list class, most people making a website no longer need to be touching HTML.

Looking at the Wikipedia page on current content management systems, I suspect there are very few needs not covered by an existing solution. In fact, the last statement remains true even if you stay within the standard Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP hosting environment.

Most of these take a few hours to set up, at most and allows the webmaster to present content in a much more professional manner than the afternoon hack job.

Why do we still see so many badly, but painstakingly put together sites?

Not surprisingly, Nikon revealed the D3x on 1 December 2008, ending the Coolpix P6000’s short reign as Nikon with highest pixel count. See here for the news on DPReview.

The specs are a bit disappointing, since the only change compared to the D3 is the 24MP sensor, trading a doubling in pixels for lower ISO range (100-1600 as compared to 200-6400) and shooting speed (5fps (even lower for 14-bit) for 8fps). The big shock, however, is the Canon 1Ds class price tag of 8000USD.

Lots of internet people are very… angry over this, stating that the newer model is not worth 3000USD over the D3. I think I would agree.

An interesting thing to note here is that this is a demand side reaction. Less people will buy this flagship model than if it was pegged at 5000USD. Let’s look at the supply side. Assume the marginal cost of producing the D3x is the same as the D3 (not unreasonable, since Sony sells the A900 with a very similar sensor for 3000USD), and that each model costs Nikon, say 3500USD to manufacture. That means at 5000USD, Nikon will make a marginal profit of 1500USD per unit. However, at 8000USD, that profit goes up to 4500USD. This means that Nikon has to shift only a third as many units as it would have had to other wise to make the same profit. (P.S. Note I’m dealing with marginal prices, not unit prices. For those who are unfamiliar, marginal prices don’t include fixed costs, such as R&D).

I suspect no matter how much the D3x was priced at, news agencies would not have been buying them in the thousands, simply due to the D3 being a more suitable price. So Nikon couldn’t have been expecting to shift many units to start with. If that is true, the pricing decision might have been a way to keep profits high in the face of low expected demands.

I’m also assuming here that despite being vocal, the internet people don’t actually buy that much equipment. 10% of the market, maybe?

Oh, as a footnote, I’ve finally upgraded Wordpress to 2.6.5. Yah. Also installed NextGEN Gallery.

While trawling the tubes this morning, I came across this DPReview Discussion.

For those who don’t really want to read it, it discusses an unannounced new Nikkor, the AF-S VR DX Zoom-Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5 - 5.6 IF-ED (I think that will be the official name). From what I can see, this does appear to be a real lens that will probably get announced before PMA near the end of Jan 2008. It will replace the 18-70mm f/3.5 - 4.5 as “the kit lens that’s not built like ass”. Its role in the F mount stable will be similar to what the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4 - 5.6 USM IS does for the EOS system and the Carl Zeiss Sony DT 16-80mm f/3.5 - 4.5 does for the Alpha.

All of this is not particularly interesting. There will always be well designed mid range zooms because that’s what people are most used to. This one adds VR and a 24mm equivalent wide end to the last model at the expense of 2/3 stops of light at the long end.

What is interesting/annoying is how unrealistic people’s expectations are. The forums are rife with people being disappointed that this is not a full frame lens. For comparaison, till 3 month ago, the widest full frame Nikon zoom lens was the 17-35mm, a 2.1x zoom that weight a kilogram, took 77mm filters and costed a whole lot. Now, people are honestly expecting a 5.1x zoom to start wider , weigh half as much, cost less than a third and have a smaller filter size than the old champion. I think some people are still waiting for that AF-S VR Zoom-UV-Micro-Nikkor 10-1000mm f/1.0 IF-ED.

Technological progress moves fast, but not that fast. Really now.

On the other hand, there’s a few lenses that could be useful and are feasible… but I’ll resist joining the bunch of wish-list-makers on the web.

In the last few days, there was a big hoo-haover Facebook’s privacy. Long story short, one of its new revenue generating components is called Beacon. It places ads on Facebook, and if you follow the link to the store site and purchase something, Facebook gets a referral fee. Nothing new there. However, there is an additional feedback in that the store reports back to Facebook what you bought. This is then displayed as part of your newsfeed. As a result, when your friends log in, they can see what you bought.

Now, this caused problems in two major ways: First one is easy: people buying stuff they are a bit embarrassed about (*coughporncough*). Secondly, surprise Christmas presents are disclosed.

It turns out that this feature is supposed to function as something Facebook would like to call “trusted referral”, which makes sense in the context that if you are in the market for something, you can see what your friends bought and use that as a guide for your decision. As most things on Facebook, it could be turned off. However, it was left on by default, which is what actually upset people. Now it’s been left off be default.

Ok. This is now. I don’t think it’s significant. However, why did I write that things have changed?

I followed this link off the news article, to a similar article just over a year ago. This older article shares a mould with the newer one. Privacy concern. Newsfeed. On by default. Introduced an “off” option. People happy.

The amazing thing is the reason for the protest (quote from the page):

The backlash came over Facebook’s decision Tuesday to deliver automated, customized alerts about a user’s closest friends, classmates and colleagues. Users who log on might instantly find out that someone they know has joined a new social group, posted more photos or begun dating their best friend.

I joined Facebook shortly after that episode. The fact that all these information, by default, are delivered to all my “Facebook friends” is something I’ve taken for granted. I am used to the lack of privacy on Facebook, and acts accordingly. What caused an outrage just a year ago is the norm now.

It’s incredible how Facebook has opened up many people’s lives to the public view, and how people have grown used to it. More than not, it’s open knowledge who knows who and how they relate to each other. If you want to know where someone is going to be on a given evening, checking the Events calendar will give you a pretty good idea.

The biggest one is the “relationship” field. Any changes to it is sure to attract attention. Changing it to “It’s complicated” is to cause a scandal. New relationships and breakups are closely followed by Facebook updates.  One of my friends made public his engagement on Facebook before making phone calls or writing emails.

Personally, I find this a bit sad, as it devalues a lot of inter-personal communication. For lots of trivial things, (like which parties you are attending), it’s fine. But as petty as it sounds, I do value it when friends go to the effort to let me know what’s going on in their lives before making it public. Facebook is just so… impersonal.

To close off, I’m not blaming Facebook itself. I like Facebook. It’s useful. I do think, however, that people might benefit from taking some time to consider how to integrate means of communication, old and new, instead of doing everything via newsfeeds.

For the past few days, I’ve been doing vac work at the Bank that pays for my rent.

Stereotypically, one of the first things I did was check what parts of the Internet is available for free access, and how to get around any blocks. Here’s a summary.

• Gmail is blocked via a simple URL filtering. www.gmail.com is out, but mail.google.com works. The embedded Google Talk client works too. Nice.
• Google Reader works.
• Facebook is blocked. A proxy site such as www.kproxy.com lets you see most of the things. However, it is rather unreliable. Also, GUI components such as drop down menus and pop up dialogues are lost. There might be easier ways around it, but I haven’t found anything good. In laziness, I’m settling on Opera Mini 4 on my phone, connecting over 3G. The ability of this little app to render full web-pages (not just mobile ones) on a phone is simply epic.

That’s all the stuff I’d really want on a day to day basis I guess.

It actually went up a few days ago, but I’ve only added a few more photos now. Here’s the link. I still need to update the home page, but that will happen.

I went with Coppermine for the simple reason that Bluehost makes it really easy to install. Even after using it briefly, I don’t think it’s the greatest thing ever, but it’s not that important, so I’m not going to waste too much time on it.

I spend too much time reading camera and lens reviews. After a while, I’ve learnt which review sites are good for what, i.e. which of Ken Rockwell’s rants to take seriously and which ones to ignore.

Thought I’d write up a summary of it.

This will be a work in progress. I’ll be adding more to it as I feel like.

I’m looking for a new pair of specs. Not entirely unexpectedly, this has turned up to be much more complicated than it needs to be.

I’ve spend about half a day researching vision correcting optics. Read the summary of my findings here:

Finally, I’ve succumbed to writing a personal blog. It was partially based on my decision that it’s about time I had my own website with its own domain name. I’ve been parking www.tian.co.za for the past 9 month or so. It’s time to put it to use.

I’ve actually own another website elsewhere, but that was a once off joke (check it out here if you must: Tribute to Highlander Bob). The host I used was a South African company Hetzner. While the service was acceptable, the pricing was simply not competitive with the US hosting companies. After not much research, I settled 0n BlueHost. No real reason really. It was the first link off the WordPress site.

See how boring this is getting already?

I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing with this site, but there will probably be a photo gallery at some stage for a few photos I take. In addition, it will be a nice change to have a email address that doesn’t contain the letter “Z”.

Anyhow, I think there will also be a few fixed pages of tech stuff. I do an excessive amount of research before I buy anything technical. I guess I might as well as write up summaries just so that I can have it sorted out in my own mind. If anyone else finds it useful, great.