Facilitating Online Identity Management
January 26, 2009 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software
Companies should make identity management easy within their online services. Specifically, it's becoming more and more desirable to have a "split my identity" feature.
For example, I have a Twitter account. Turns out I like Twitter. (It wasn't always the case.) Eventually I want to split my twitter stream into a personal stream and a business stream. The business stream would be open to followers. The personal stream I'd probably restrict to people I've met in person. When I'm posting about selecting music for vacuuming, that's personal-stream material. When I'm wishing out loud for a feature improvement in Adobe InDesign that can be public.
But what if I decide to split my streams after I have 100 followers, not all of whom belong on the personal list?
The current practice is to start announcing on the existing account that you have a new account – "if you haven't met me in person I'm planning to block you, so go follow me over at this new account." You might announce this every day for a week, perhaps a few times on the last couple of days, then go block everyone you haven't met in person.
Some followers will make the move, some won't. Unless you care a lot you probably won't track who fell off the list, especially if you have far more than 100 followers.
It would be better if I could choose which followers to "move" to the new account. That is, I would choose which followers will follow my new business account instead of my existing personal account – without any action on their part. I move their "following" subscription to another identity. Maybe they get an email letting them know.
That's it: no business rules, no criteria, no searching. Just a list of followers (rows) and maybe two columns of checkboxes – people could be on either or both lists.
This wonderful solution assumes that the service can associate my two accounts with each another. In other words, one person can have more than one account. For many services you are allowed to have more than one account, but many times the service uses your email address to create the unique account.
It's very convenient for developers to use an email address as a login – I've done it myself. It's convenient because it's guaranteed to be unique without any development effort. No downcasing, no uniqueness checking, the user doesn't have to remember lots of different login names, etc. But if every account requires a unique email, then this "split my identity" feature is very, very difficult – potentially impossible – to implement.
To allow each email address to have more than one identity is a very big architectural change if the initial design didn't account for this idea. Changing the one-to-one relationship of a login account to a one-to-many relationship will likely have a lot of "ripple effects" throughout the codebase, so the development cost will be very high. Thus the probability of developing the feature is low. Well-financed services can do whatever they need to do to service their users. Bootstraps and startups usually cannot.
Had the service started out with this idea it would be much easier to design and build, even if they didn't implement it at the start. This is a good example of the importance of key architectural decisions made early in the design process. Sometimes you know what you'll want to do in the future, and sometimes you don't. But it's worth spending enough time in the very earliest design stages to think through the implications of the trade-offs you're making.
In theory this problem is an aspect of what OpenID is supposed to solve, going further by abstracting across websites and services, not just within one service. It's designed by Brad Fitzpatrick, so it's probably the right idea. Reviewing the history you can see why, in general, adoption by developers is slow (but growing and accelerating). But even using OpenID, the service will have to build their data model around a one-to-many login/account relationship. Twitter's growth provides a good example of why the effort might be worth it.
Link Love
January 16, 2009 | People & Society
Shout out to the The Macalope, who noted Notio's comment over at Megan McCardle's place, regarding her annoying Apple commentary. I had left an earlier comment, suggesting she use Daring Fireball as a primary source, but it didn't make it through moderation.
I was just connecting the dots between the Macalope nomination for Michael Wolff as jackass of the year, as outlined earlier today, and Megan, who failed to win this particular round, though not without consideration.
Economics Blogs
January 9, 2009 | Business & Commerce | People & Society
I gave a talk to a local business group about blogs, Twitter, social media and all that, and one of the participants emailed asking for blog recommendations to learn more about economics. Here's what I suggested.
I think Umair Haque is by far the most interesting 'business strategy' writer right now. Strategy has to take account of economics, and he's pointing the way forward.
It would be hard to leave out Paul Krugman, having just won the Nobel Prize and all. I happen to agree with his politics, but he's worth reading even if you don't, simply because he's so dang smart.
Barry Ritholtz called BS on the housing market several years ago, and his irreverent take on things keeps him in my regular reading list. You will learn a lot about how to interpret relevant numbers and statistics from him.
Nouriel Rorbini is SUPER-smart, and was also a contrarian to the bubble mentality. His predictions will probably be scary, and more-so once you notice that he's been right most of the time.
There's the Freakonomics blog which is always interesting for always-different reasons.
Locally, Andrew Samwick of Dartmouth has always had good pointers and a take on things that doesn't always line up with my way of thinking.
Tyler Cowen gets a lot of linklove, and though I don't read him often, it's good to check in once in a while.
The Calculated Risk blog is interesting, as is The Cunning Realist in that they are anonymous, but the insight is obviously deep and worthwhile.
Probably the most important thing to do is follow links in the posts. When you find an author you like, and they link somewhere, it's like a citation to the background source. You'll often find good related blogs this way.
Also, look at blogrolls. These are the links of blogs the author scans regularly, something of a recommendation – "if you like this, you'll probably like that." For instance, the blogroll at Barry Ritholtz's blog is excellent for the econ topic.
Introduction to Grateful Dead
January 8, 2009 | Arts & Culture | Life
So, you have a new friend, and one day she says, "You should burn me a Grateful Dead CD because I'm really not familiar with anything they've done." You say, "Sure," and a few minutes later your head explodes as you reel from the possibilities. It takes a week of full-time leisure-thought to sort it all out and find an entry point....
The catalog is vast. 30 years of concert performances. Over 3,000 shows, most of them available as recordings! Hundreds of songs in the repertoire. Dozens officially released concert CDs. Thousands upon thousands of authorized private non-commercial concert tapes and discs. The Internet Archive has 2,854 multi-hour downloads online, and it's certainly incomplete.
You start by wondering how your friends might answer this question. So you ask a few, and their first response is to laugh. "Wow, not sure. I don't know...." is the typical response before their voice trails off.
Do we start with the old experimental shows? (No.) Or the most modern powerhouse shows? (Maybe.) The middle years, at the peak of their creativity? (Possible.) Pigpen-era? Keith-ear? Brent-era? We certainly know enough not to start with the Vince era.
Do I burn something I like? Or something I think she will like? Do I pick something with clean sound, or something gritty, real, and otherworldly? Do I choose an official release so it's nicely edited, or a tape I recorded myself in the '80s?
When people asked this during the college years I'd just give them a copy of whatever I was listening to at the time. It was always changing, there was always more. If they liked it, or even if they didn't, we'd just bring 'em along the next time the Dead were playing nearby and see if they caught the live magic lightening. Or maybe they liked it a lot, and wanted to drink from the fire hose – they'd bring over a tape deck and spend the weekend copying cassettes. Tape flip every 45 minutes. Oh, the slow lazy days of real-time dubbing. Roll another one.
Today, virtually none of this is possible. We have only the recorded legacy, and a lot of it. Today, we burn 70-minute CDs in 14 minutes.
For starters, let's eliminate the studio albums. Although there are some worthy of listening, there's no sense in starting there. The Dead experience revolved around live performance. Maybe a Dick's Pick concert release? But then what to say? That 1971 show that turned Donni into a raving Deadhead? The 1983 one with a chunky Scarlet Fire? The '77 Fox Theater shows? That weird '74 Alexandra Palace show that makes you feel like you're tripping just listening to it? Maybe that '73 Oklahoma show because it has such a hot summer beer-drunk lazy vibe?
Dick's Picks narrows it down but doesn't really help the selection process. Maybe we should just have an all-Dead weekend and see how that goes....
How about if I just burn the five-disc chronological set, So Many Roads? This was put together by scholarly Deadheads, with carefully selected songs and thorough liner notes. It flows well, and you can start in the middle and work out toward the early and late years. But you don't want to overload. She just asked for a sample, a taste, you don't need to deliver a box-load of discs to paw through.
Maybe Dozin' at the Knick, that's a pretty safe bet. The playing is quite tight; the polish meets anyone's standards, and it's from a good era. But somehow, no. Can't tell you why. Probably a good second round offering.
What about an audience recording, like Lewiston 1980? Well, that was a short-lived thought. It is a rockin' fantastic show, and it seems like every Deadhead I know was there, except for me. And the audience recording on archive.org is a fantastic representation. But, man, that show is dead to the core. I think it's best left to round three or four.
What about a multi-track release like Go to Nassau? This was a contender, and I listened to it on my commute for two days. Strong contender. But, like Dozin', not quite right. A little too rock 'n roll, not enough representation of the thoughtful, mellow side. Yes, I know that High Time is rarely played and it's well-played on this release, but still.
It came down to eras. Late '70s, early '80s, or late '80s/early '90s. Each has their charms—and there are other options but these seem best for introductory material—and it depends a lot on what the prospect likes and listens to already.
In the end, I decided on the remastered versions of Reckoning and Dead Set. Two live recordings from 1980, when Brent was new but settled in, and highly polished in production. Reckoning is all acoustic, so you get the Folkie Country Dead, and Dead Set is electric, with the more typical sound. The innovative recording technique pioneered new ground, and the band, rarely allowed to play sophisticated and intimate venues like the Warfield Theater in SF and Radio City Music Hall in NYC, rose to the occasion with fresh, tight ensemble playing. The remastered versions are two discs each, with a lot of bonus material. It's still four discs – what can a deadhead say? – but split in half by the acoustic/electric difference.
I figured if that floats then round two will be a single show (complete experience), from the west coast (home field advantage), in a small venue (raise the stakes), from the Dan Healy era (psychoacoustic sound effects). So we're talkin' probably the Greek or the Frost, maybe Ventura, from the 1980's.
On a plane to Detroit I listened to a soundboard from 6/19/1989 (Greek Theater). It's a serious contender. The headphone experience was something else. The harmonic vocal processing, the stereo exchanger effects, the setlist, Garcia's heartfelt Candyman, Crazy Fingers, and Knockin' – really brought me back, I tell 'ya, even on a plane.
I think a full survey of the late-eighties Greek and Frost shows is in order, but if you had to choose today you could do a lot worse than the 6-19-89 at the Greek.
[I wrote this in August, 2006, but never posted it. I think I had intended to link up a lot of the text and never got to it. Decided to post it today without the link farming.]
Stop Counting Calories!
January 8, 2009 | Life | Nature & Environment
It's amazing!! Did you know salad has almost no calories!?! But a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a coke is nearly a whole day's calorie budget! You can eat as many carrots as you want! - they're like free food calorie-wise. But ice creme, whoa! - smaller portions, please. And then, exercise: If I did almost ANYTHING in movement I could eat more junk food! That hour of snow shoveling this morning was worth a muffin or something, maybe even a chocolate croissant. Mowing the lawn for 90 minutes burns 900 calories - a guy could have a couple three beers on a sunny day and yet his beer-gut expansion would be neutralized. They say God works in mysterious ways....
