TechNayak(mirror)

I have been a big fan of OpenId for a long time and also advice many people about the benefits of using it. What I really disliked was the fact that big names were missing from the OpenId directories. That changed as Yahoo is beta testing being an OpenId provider and the news is Great. First of all it almost triples the number of users who have OpenIds and also almost every internet user has a yahoo account (approx 30 million) , which makes the proposition a whole lot better.

I have been trying to make a web property OpenId enabled and its a cinch. Just download and install libraries for the multitde of programming languages and then just follow some basic configuration steps , map the OpenId users to your user management system and you are done. Here is a list of all the plugins available for OpenId enabling your site.

OpenId has really come of age and with Yahoo announcing support its become a neccesity for almost every web App. I would even go so far as to mandate websites , old and new , to enable OpenId on their sites and save the users from the painful signup and confirm cycle. The sheer number of OpenId holders should be motivation enough for properties to go the OpenId way.

Google updated their Analytics product by launching a new script termed ga.js that is used for tracking. The new script handles more complexity than the original urchin.js script and the analytics tool itself has some new features that can be utilized only by ga.js tracking. You can also compare multiple metrics on the same graph thanks to the new graphing features included in the recent update. The new updates seem really neat and there is a detailed PDF describing migration instructions and how to’s.

The older tracking code urchin.js will still continue to work for at least another year but there will be no feature updates or compatibility with the newer features. For me , this change means revisiting lots ( and I mean lots ) of pages where I have embedded the tracking code. Lets hope it goes smoothly.

The Algorithm is taking over and there is nothing we can do

In what can be termed as a not so wise decision, Google has decided to rid its customers the privilege of choosing where to put their ads. You will not be seeing the advertise on this site link on the served up google ads. Was this is a good decision, is still debatable. The reason : the ads that people put up on sites do not get clicked as much as the ones that the adsense computers pick out. The numbers back up their theory.

Its still a feeling of insecurity - if you ask me. As a publisher, I would like to publish my ads on certain sites that I know will give me better ROI. This situation is very similar to the proof of the four colored theorem. How will google prove that the ads that are served though the adsense engines do really help in better marketing the publishers wares? Is there even a quantifiable measure to check the validity of those ads? Sure the numbers back up the case, but the minority could definitely have done better things in terms of sales. Not all transactions on adsense go down as ROI, its only what the publisher decides to track. If the publisher has no shopping cart or an online selling model, how will the adsense inpact be felt. All these are questions unanswered. But for now the algorithm rules supreme.

I wrote about personalization some time back and about how we should actually be approaching this problem. Google has got their act into place and are making your own light weight personalization meter, but its for ads

Google is going to put a cookie in your browser that will record information everytime you read an ad served by Google. Continue reading Personalization is one cookie away…

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

The craze for offline web has just started and we will see more and more momentum in this area. It was Brad Neuberg and the Dojo’s offline toolkit that started offering a swf based mechanism to access files offline, it was followed by some hacks and some other mechanisms. Now its the goog in action, with its Google Gears. The OS plugin needs to be installed in your system to be able to access some Google services like Greader offline, in fact thats where I first noticed it. I am still yet to checkout a working demo, but I am not completely convinced about an installable plugin, it just ruins the experience of the web. Think about it for sometime and you will realize that you will probably never go offline, online except for on your personal laptop or PC, but still a plugin independent implementation would have definitely be rocking.

I am a big fan of new technologies, right from js frameworks to flex to apollo to silverlight, I have always taken pleasure in checking out possibilities. I have even made proof of concepts whenever I could. But frankly speaking , adding download and install plugins like the flash player, silverlight runtime etc is seriously an overhead. The web dev team in my office still develops for IE 5 and Netscape Navigator; you really cannot expect to deliver next gen apps to such people. Whats more depressing is that a majority of the populous consists of those people . I think the success of js frameworks like dojo, yui , prototype was the fact that their model didn’t require any new tricks to your usual browsing habits. In fact, many of these frameworks gracefully degrade down based on your WYSIWYG’s configuration. I don’t think its safe to call these overhead based technologies like gears, sliverlight, apollo - web technologies. But , thats just my opinion.

Well how about a install all pack which contains all the runtimes required. A single update patch on XP Service pack 3 and Vista Service pack. That should make at least 60 to 70 pc of the world ready to receive these technologies. But back to the point , Google Gears . Will update after checking it out. I like the promise of space, the reader promises almost 2000 articles and thats a lot of space let m wait it out.

Yahoo rolls out unlimited storage for its mail users.

Myspace is acquiring its leading photo sharing widget provider photobucket for just over 250 Million dollars.

Yahoo photos will be shut down in a couple of months to promote flickr. One touch migration to flickr, photobucket, shutterfly etc will be provided.

Microsoft gives a sneak peak at its next version of SQL Server 2008 at its first ever Business Intelligence conference , project codenamed Katamai.

Google unveils its universal search , a platform for searching all content and data types.

Microsoft Live mail matures with Ajaxified interface thanks to its asp.net ajax. It even boasts of a Live desktop client that integrates outlook, windows messenger and search. Could spell an end to other mail clients.

For my first surprise, I was greeted by a “we have changed” page on my Google Analytics account. The interface have been redone and the personalizations built into the account. You can now drag and drop items into your dashboard like the igoogle interface and make your custom dashboard. You can even schedule and get reports delivered as pdfs.

The new interface has also removed the rough edges the application had in terms of usability and have done a tremendous job on the personalization front. Its worth a look. If you liked the older interface better, then thats on the offering too, just a link away, but the new beta homepage is worth the effort.

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

So I wake up to this blog on Yodel and I read that the new yahoo messenger web is out. I had eagerly awaited the Yahoo mail beta integration with yahoo messenger and also expected a really fancy app but it was a let down. I have seen YUI’s capabilities and rather than use YUI , the developers chose a more flash based approach , probably a flex app. Scalability of the app would definitely have been a concern but Im sure yahoo could have managed the show well.

It adds more credibility if you use homegrown technology to show your prowess rather than use third party tools. Anyhow , you would traditionally expect a flash app to look and perform better than js based apps but this contradicts general expectations. The fonts are terrible and essential emulations of desktop apps like multiple window chats are missing. I somehow don’t see people using this service, at least when you have services like meebo around. And to add to the misery is the traditional Yahoo vertical banner that takes 30% of your real estate away.

you can check it out as http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/ or as web.im

Here’s a screenshot of the app - click to enlarge

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

Update : I just checked out what Silverlight is capable of on their site http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ and its really great. The silverlight runtime is just over an MB in size, download and let the magic begin. Now don’t think Im being partial, but look at circumstances, Flash has been around for aeons and one doesn’t expect a technology that came out years later to just measure up to a giant like flash. Just like nobody expects an OS released a year later to measure up to Vista. But guess what Silverlight just completely blew me away, it will, to you too. Recently, my friend and I were discussing technology that will keep top firms alive and when we reached Adobe, we immediately remembered the Macromedia acquisition and how they cemented their presence for the next decade or so. Somehow we never thought WPF/E will deliver and it did and that too in style. Its worth a look if you haven’t looked already.

Adobe has revealed that their Flex technology will go open source. The essential parts like the compiler and debugger are going open source , so all the flex developers can be relieved. I don’t the more essential Flex Builder will go Open anytime soon though. Its just obvious that not many are that fluent with ActionScripting and MXML, and the builder is what makes flex such a powerful resource. I have read countless blogs from people who come from web dev backgrounds, who have found the design and implementation of Flex apps very confusing. Its exactly like the .NET and Visual Studio dependency. I know very few .NET developers who can do without Visual Studio, its isn’t even supposed to be done that way. The decision is an attempt to let the developer community contribute to the flex platform and make it better, also probably give Apollo the push it deserves.

Microsoft Silverlight, aka WPF/E is a contender against flex for its capabilities of building RIA’s. Considering that it just released its SDK to developers , it will be worth watching which technology picks up turbulence and is accepted world wide from the developer community. Both these technologies promise a seamless desktop/web experience, the one where you can work offline and drag drop things to your desktop from your browser and sync with existing apps on your desktop. Considering that both have downloadable runtimes, developer SDK, local filesystem access and proprietary development environments will make these two very close competitors. People are already expecting MS to announce silverlight to be open in the forthcoming MIX.

Even though I have never worked with WPF/E, I have heard enough praises about its look and feel, ease of use and great build and deploy tools. Microsofts Expression is the recommended tool for Silverlight development and we all know how MS likes to spoon feed developers. I have done Flex and even made a POC of types for my personal page and its a cinch to develop simple forms and everyday applications. I would like to get my hands dirty with Silverlight too to be able to talk about it(Calling all MS execs to give me a free license ).

I just finished checking out OpenDNS after I read about it and I must say, its a really novel idea. What it does is really simple, modify your internet connection to point to the DNS provided by the OpenDNS folks and then you can create shortcuts to your visited pages. Like the example given below

 Its sort of like a bookmarking service but at a more abstracted level. Though I don’t see people thronging to use OpenDNS instead of their regular browser bookmarks or social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us , but its a good service for network administrators.
   If you are an network admin for a company, college or an institution, you will be aware of the wealth of useful applications that are present on the intranet. You will also know that many of these applications are hosted on different internal servers and aren’t really that accessible either through their URLs or through their navigational qualities. Many go as far as creating a central repository of links to these internal application, but the larger the list grows , the tougher it becomes for searching the services you require.

 Instead use OpenDNS, and you make mail point to your internal mail server, or HR point to your internal human resources portal. Its a cinch to use and doesn’t require you changing your DNS lookup tables in your gateway machine.