everyday

via: Simple Bits

Some exciting news from the developers of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8! Basically they have reversed course on their previous decision to hamstring standards based web design by forcing IE8 to render all web pages in an identical fashion as IE7, unless explicitly told to do otherwise. Microsoft was planning on forcing web developers tell IE8 to render a web page according to web standards or else IE8 would render the page identically to IE7 (which has some shortcomings when it comes to standards).

This is definitely good news and I for one am glad to see Microsoft making a decision that makes sense for the web community at large.

I was searching Google for some information on Adobe Lightroom and came across this at the bottom of the results page:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

Is this for real? I can’t believe it! This is surely a sign that the end is near. This is even more proof that large corporations are running the show. When I search the internet, I should not be censored by the United States government! I view this as a violation of my rights to free speech. I have been presumed guilty of doing something that corporations don’t want me to do, and am therefore being censored by the United States government. I have broken no law, I have made no trespass. It should be up to me, and me alone whether or not I will view the results of an internet query, the United States government need not intervene on behalf of any corporation.

You probably haven’t heard about OpenID yet, well if you are one of the few readers of this blog I can almost gaurantee that you haven’t. OpenID is, quite simply put, the end to usernames and passwords. Think about it, how many different sites do you frequent where you have to login with a username and password? How great would it be to be free from all that mess?

This has been done in the past, Microsoft tried with their “Passport” system (now called LiveID), but it was dependent upon Microsoft. There has been a move to get SAML into the mainstream, but that has all but failed as well due to vendor issues (although Google is using it for Google Apps).

All of these various systems basically work the same. Let’s say you want to sign in to some website to access some online service , maybe Last.fm (which I love!). Well, Last.fm needs to know that you are who you are so that it can provide you with its services. Currently they maintain their own username and password database for authentication. If they were to implement LiveID or SAML or OpenID then you would simply provide your username and password for one of those services and after some behind the scenes magic, Last.fm would authenticate you and allow you to log in.

The primary difference between OpenID and the other attempts at SSO for the web is that with OpenID you get to pick who does the authentication. With Microsoft’s Live ID, Microsoft provides the authentication. With SAML, it is some 3rd party identity provider. With OpenID it can be you (well, your website at least) or any number of OpenID providers. The point being that it is free, open, distributed authentication; which is cool!

I have seen a few of the comics from xkcd and have found them to be rather funny (although I don’t know what that says about me…). Anyways, check it out!

Well, nothing like being a month late. While I was extremely disappointed with Flickr’s prescribed response time, the problem did sort itself out the next day. I was finally able to log in to Flickr about one hour before I was contacted by their technical support. So, poor support, but the problem fixed itself. Hopefully I will not need to contact Flickr’s technical support any more in the future.

I have used Flickr for years now. While I have been generally pleased with their service, pleased enough to upgrade to their “Pro” service, I have recently ran into a problem with their support (or lack thereof) that I find wholly unacceptable. I was in the process of migrating my Flickr account to a new Yahoo! ID when my Flickr account became inaccessible. When I attempt to login to my Flickr account using my Yahoo! ID, I receive the following error:

Your registration was successful.

However, we couldn’t log you in automatically because it looks like you don’t have cookies enabled.

There are a few options:

• Clear your existing Flickr cookies
• Check that your cookies are actually enabled (Click here for instructions on how to enable your cookies.)
• If you’ve done both of these things, and restarted your browser, and tried to log in and it’s still not working, please contact us.

Here’s a link to the login page.

Alright, some funky error is happening. No big deal, sometimes this stuff happens and I am willing to allow them to correct the problem. I set out to contact Flickr according to their directions. The form was simple and I had it filled out in just a few moments. After clicking on “Submit”, I received the following email:

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we’ve successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond within 3 days.

We’d also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

Lastly, you may not be aware that our FAQs and forums are full of help goodness:

http://www.flickr.com/help/faq/
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/

The Flickreenos

Some of you may have missed the infuriating part… 3 days!!! Are they kidding? I pay good money for this service and their goal for simply responding to my support inquiry is 3 days! WTF? This is simply unacceptable, and I am looking into alternatives to Flickr as soon as I finish this post. With my annual membership as a Flickr Pro user I expect “Pro” support, not to have to wait 3 days for a response to my inquiry. Note that they have not said that the problem will be fixed within 3 days (which would also be unacceptable), they will only be responding to my inquiry within 3 days.

I was a little apprehensive when it was announced that Yahoo! would be acquiring Flickr. Up until today, when I required support, I have had no problems. After perusing the user forums I have found that there are many unhappy users that have received poor support from Flickr, post Yahoo!.

I will post Flickr’s actual response time and what the resolution of the problem when that eventually happens.

[UPDATE] I did receive a response from Flickr, within their specified time, but the the problem had already magically fixed itself. I still thinks that 3 days is way too long to expect a support response from a service that I am paying for!

Unbeknownst to most, your when you provide your user name and password to the Google Notifier for either Gmail or the Google Calendar you are transmitting those credentials in plain text. In order to secure your credentials, you need to configure the Google Notifier to transmit your credentials via secure http (https). To do, follow the directions in this article on macosxhints.com. I have discussed security in regards to Gmail before (see: “Secure your Gmail“), but that wasn’t necessarily in regards to the notifier.

While this may not seem all that important to you, just take a moment to consider how much of your personally identifiable information is transmitted through email. Without securing your credentials, you are inviting anyone to sniff your packets and pull any information that they want.

As far as I know, this little tip only works on the wonder-filled Mac OSX operating system.

What are Microformats? Why are they cool? Who cares? I shall attempt to answer these questions.

Microformats are simple data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Think, business cards for email or appointment items in your favorite calendar application. While these are two simple examples, microformats are much more than this. With Microformats a person can take their existing content and give it more meaning by using more semantic markup which will allow the machine to understand what the information is without any user interaction.

Why are they cool? They will, if widely adopted, allow for a richer web-based experience for the end user. Imagine visiting my blog, clicking on a link and adding my contact info (or my weblogs contact info) to your address book in Gmail. You could visit the website of a club or team and add an event to your online calendar by, again, click on a single link.

Why do you care about microformats? Well, maybe you don’t, but I suspect that if they take off, you will begin to care. I can see myself re-coding my blog (just a little) to include some aspects of microformats in the very near future. Currently I tag my blog entries with something relevant to the story for easily sorting through stories by category (or tag). Until microformats came about, there was no standardized way to let an indexing site (like Technorati or Digg) know that a tag is a tag. Microformats will allow the web, and the content in it, to have more meaning. When visiting a site, your web browser will know know more about the information you are viewing and will, in turn, allow you to do more with it without having to actually do more.

Just a little tip for ensuring that Gmail (you are using Gmail aren’t you?) is as secure as possible.

Instead of going to http://www.gmail.com, go to https://www.gmail.com. It is that simple! What’s the difference? Note the super letter “S” in “https://”, this denotes a secure HTTP session, thus securing your email, I mean “Gmail”.

On a side note, a new Firefox update was recently release. The program should update it self, but if it hasn’t, or if you are unsure do the following:

1. open Firefox
2. Click on “Help”
3. Clink on “Check for Updates”

One of the neat little features I noticed is the difference in the address bar when you are in a HTTPS session, the address bar turns yellow and there is a little padlock icon on the right. This was probably done in response to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 having the same functionality, the difference is that Firefox came out with this enhancement in a couple of weeks compared to Microsoft’s five year lag between major versions.