I need your clothes, your boots, and your OpenID

No coder's blog is complete without a code sample so without further ado here it comes.

On my current project we're using OpenID. When folk come to register we wanted to be cool and prepopulate the fields on our reg. form with data from your OpenID persona (Name, Email, Nickname etc). After a bit of googling and hackery I figured the way to do this is to use a simple extension of the OpenID persona stuff called SReg (simple registration extension). You can request extra user data by calling the following on the response object.


response = openid_consumer.begin openid_server_url

response.add_extension_arg('sreg','required','email,nickname')
response.add_extension_arg('sreg','optional','gender')

response.redirect_url(return_to_url, complete_openid_signon_url)


When your latest victim gets redirected to their OpenID server, they will be prompted to allow your site access to the specific details you ask for.

Enjoy!

You need less stuff in your life

One of my good friends Robbie has been blogging recently about customer experience and cites an excellent link to a presentation by Oxford Professor Barry Schwartz. Viewing this really got me thinking about the value of all the paraphenalia we surround ourselves with in everyday life. Many of the people I know have multiple communcation devices (phone, blackberry, laptop etc); many of which carry these devices most of the time they're out. Enter now, Unified Communications. The notion of having or being accessible on a multitude of devices or, conversely, specifying a device on which you can be reached by certain individuals.

The mere fact that we have so much choice in our lives, and are pressured from all sides to be accessible wherever, whenever is required is, in my opinion, a product of "the customer always being right".

I've previously mentioned that i'm reading "The Cluetrain Manifesto" at the moment. Many of these issues are described, with in-business examples therein. (Well worth a read if you haven't already). It is interesting then, the culture shift which is becoming more evident daily. Finally people are choosing to step away from the piped glossy-content media, and the dictatorial approach with which you are marketed at as a demographic rather than a person. The plastic marketing speak and "your-call-is-important-to-us" rhetoric has worn thin and people are looking for other ways.

What happened to world politics in the 60s and 70s is beginning to play out with you and 'your data' in business and the internet is the guerilla force fighting for you!

Vivé lá revolucion!

The latest rule on my Gmail inbox

If incoming mail:

Matches: from:(*@facebookmail.com) (wrote OR posted OR invited OR added) -event

Do this: Skip Inbox, Delete it

I could probably do this on facebook preferences but its more satisfying this way.

I now support your OpenID

You can now use your OpenID to make comments and do other things on my blog. If you don't have one, check out myopenid

Whoo whoo - Ride the Cluetrain

I've just started reading The Cluetrain Manifesto this week. I am genuinely amazed that this book was first published in 2001. The observations and indeed thought therein, are way ahead of their time, or crucially, I have been ignoring my subconscious for a little too long.

I've been getting increasingly disillusioned by many bodies of thought which exist in corporate business. The nonsense which so often prevails over good sense and pervades, infects almost, the good work which some set out to do. Rushing a job to give the appearance of performance; half arsed, ill timed, decision making - all too common. Having covered only the first chapter or so, Doc Searls and his band of merry men explicitly describe how and why business must evolve to quell these behaviours through realising that people are...er... people. I absolutely love the tagline:

We are not seats or eyeballs or consumers or end users.

We are human beings.

And our reach exceeds your grasp.

Deal with it.

Get a copy. If you're in business and the above sounds like your company, its time to wise up.

Big, rich and stoopid v. Small, nerdy but happy

I don't know about you but in my school but it really paid off to be big. You could get to the front of the lunch queue, people would look up to you, you'd get first pick of the girls, you'd probably be picked first at football... If I look back many of these people have, to a greater or lesser extent, gone off the rails; certainly not achieved their potential (not all, granted).

So its funny in software; big short-sighted corporates throwing their weight around without a real understanding of the problem they want to solve, taking the first thing which looks good to them without the breadth of scope to look at the bigger picture. Small software startups don't have the luxury of a shed load of cash, so their ideas stand on their merit and the skill of their developers. Factors which affect all businesses, often affect them the most; but more importantly, they have the greatest ability to disrupt and affect their markets. In small companies, big egos and megalomania are brought back to reality early (often painfully). In corporates, they have the opportunity to fester and develop; a bit like how Hitler came to power.

This is why I believe, the future of software has, is, and will continue to be determined by small smart driven companies, not the crap we see from the heavyweights.

SaaA - Software as an Artform

There's always been a part of me which has been interested in Graphics, Typography, Site design; generally computery things which appeal to the eye. Indeed, when I began study towards my degree, I chose to Major in Computer Visualisation. It was a close call between going down the Arts and design route, or staying geeky and cutting code. I chose the latter in the end but maybe not for long; in practice at least.

It is interesting then, that over time, software development, or a significant proportion thereof, is now undertaken using similar principles to those adopted by the graphic design industry.

A design agency will often conduct initial consultation, understand something about the business and who the design work is to appeal to, before undertaking several drafts, each of which are presented back to the customer to approve/disprove of. Thereon, iteratively, the designer will develop the design in collaboration with the customer to reach the desired end goal.

With the increase in agile development, this move towards close collaboration with the customer, iterative delivery of, what will evolve to be the end product; clear parallels can be drawn between the two. Indeed, it is certainly true for web applications; Design REALLY matters. No wonder then, that the way we build software and the way we design our interactions with it, come closer together. With the role of design becoming more important then, this opens the question, what is the next step for software development? Gui tools and MDA's successor? Hope not!

You have the right to remain silent.

Both Yannis and Kerry told me that comments were broken on my blog. Fixed now. Too much hacking without actually reading the code.

I do solemnly declare...

My colleague at work sent this around:

I hereby do notify the world that I shall not join any form of online service that has any of the following features:

• Requires me to work out who my friends are.
• Asks me to approve you as a friend before we can communicate.
• Sends me an email to tell me someone didn’t send me an email.
• Wants me to register before I can contribute.
• Wants me to write a constant narrative of my life just in case someone unspecified wants to read it.
• Expects me to manually give my availability or location for any reason.
• Endorses products to others based using my name.

It is interesting how quickly such things become annoying. Receiving an email to tell you someone sent you a message? The logic in doing this serves only the application. It causes the user pain. Personally, i'm glad people are beginning to realise that their data should indeed be theirs. Applications you use are only custodians; convenient stores if you will. I own my data, not my apps.

Maths and Design Patterns

Calculus, Pythagoras' Theorem, and the lowly singleton. What do all three have in common? They all express a possible solution to a common, domain specific problem. Does this mean that they are all design patterns? Is design pattern a good name for what computer science calls a design pattern?

Crap Portal

Gadget Gallery or Your ISP's 1995 Portlet

Seeing more and more of these. Wondering if a backlash of the 1995 portlet is coming again. Netvibes, iGoogle, pageflakes... iGoogle possibly the exception to the rule as its so simple to customise. They all have an uncanny likeness to this

Things are just great in England aren't they?

I was reading the economist the other day. Therein was a snapshot of the UK economy over the last 20 years. It really was a sight to behold. Falling crime rates, massive reductions in unemployment, increased wages, stable financial growth, shortest NHS waiting lists ever, I could go on.

So why are so many people so upset about the state of England then? It is a possibility that things are now so good, that we have little to concern ourselves with, instead looking to ever better living standards. Clearly there are still problems England faces; affordable housing moving ever up that ladder, proportionately to the ever depleting list of available places for new housing to be built. My colleague DE blogged about the future of London and talks about the failings of London to provide sustainable infrastructure to maintain itself. Have compromises been made in the wrong place in this country? Is England a product of its own success? Possibly.

The internet, Me, and tailored spam

I realise its pretty much inevitable that my internet usage patterns are being aggregated and are/will be used in the future for marketing directed towards me. I can live with this. I could even go a step further and say I embrace it. And this is the very reason i'm happy at the moment. I allow Last.fm to know what music I play using their funky audioscrobbler plugin in my most used music players. A perfect opportunity for direct marketing. So I was naturally delighted when I got this mail, even though indeed, it is spam. Well done Last.fm.

Amazon.com URIs

Browsing Amazon this afternoon I notice their URIs are still cruddy; surprising given how progressive Amazon are in other areas. Still some way to go here then, especially as they still use cookies and can store all their meta-crap away from the URI.

Searching for an Apple Ipod, I get:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Apple-iPod-nano-silver/dp/B000UVQA6C/ref=pd_bbs_sr_9/026-7024197-8277244
?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1194114474&sr=8-9

Hmm.

The internet and your company

One of my colleagues Kerry Buckley blogged about our company's lack of 'real' Internet access. We have, for a long time, known that this was absolutely absurd. Does make you wonder how many other companies live under this "shelter them" culture.

Slightly tangential but not so long ago, I was in the toilet of some company. On the walls and doors were notices along the lines of "Don't look at porn at work, we're watching you". Aptly someone had scrawled "1984" beneath the notice.

I think people should be allowed to govern themselves, not be subject to enforced restrictions. Sure, tell staff what you don't want them to do on work time. No need for an iron shield though.

Jack of all trades, master of some

Working in our development teams at work means that we get exposure to lots of different technologies as we practice rotations across the teams every few weeks. Question is, does this breed a general increase in knowledge or just token knowledge chunks.

For me, my development background is mainly Java, PHP and .NET but this is changing and i've found a new love in the form of Ruby. I'm working on a Ruby development project presently which is ideal for me. This model works for me. I'm not convinced it works for all people however, as it has caused some upset at times; folk ending up developing in a language they don't like, and hence don't code with love.

I realise you can't ever please all however, so i guess a Jack of all trades, Master of some, is a fair midway position.