OpenID: an antidote to multiple online identities

How many different web services/ sites do you use regularly?

Lets start with the popular ones - Gmail, Yahoo, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Orkut, ebay, Amazon, Blogger, livejournal, Wordpress plus tons of other "one time signups".
How many times have you had to click that 'Forgot password?' link while logging onto your favourite site? As the web expands and more and more popular apps are being created each day, it is becoming difficult to manage multiple online identities. This is where OpenID steps in.

OpenID eliminates the need of multiple usernames and passwords across different websites, thus simplifying your online experience. You have to choose an 'OpenID Provider' from among a fairly large list that also includes Verisign among others. You get to choose a unique username and password that will enable logging on to ALL OpenID supported sites(about ten thousand in number and growing....). If you have an account at any of yahoo/wordpress/technorati/livejournal etc., you can use that username and password as your OpenID login. Now any site which supports OpenID will have an option of logging in via this username. Its simple yet powerful. You can also turn your own personal weblog into your openID.

OpenID is as secure as any of the other authentication channels available. For a detailed insight into security and other issues, do check out their forum and wiki.

The success of the OpenID project started by Brad Fitzpatrick depends to a great extent on how widely it is adopted by the major internet players like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft as well as emerging popular social applications. The end user benefit will only be obvious when it achieves a 'standards' status, which is still far away. Nevertheless, if you are an internet addict, this should (hopefully) convince you to make the switch.

Keep track of your time

A computer opens up so many possibilities, that it's easy to lose track of time. Proves to be especially expensive for students and freelancers.

RescueTime is a desktop activities tracking application. It tracks and times all your activities including internet activities. Using the data it collected it can makes graphs and help you analyze how you spend your time.
It doesn't track activities of windows minimized or running in the background, but only ones focused on. You can tag your similar applications to track your work, amount of time spent on reading, movies, etc. You can also rate the productivities of the applications important to you ranging from -2 to +2.

You can also set targets to be reached, like ' Spend less than 1 hour every day on news'. The dampener is, when you do not comply with your target the warning comes as an email or rss alert. Wouldn't work with me, because I'm not really checking my email frantically. A better alert system would have been better, especially when they have a desktop application.

But nevertheless a really good application. If you are looking for something to track your browsing activites only, you could look at 8aweek's browser addon. it's good for setting browsing targets, because it has a popup, which immediately disables viewing the site.

If you are aware of similar products, add a comment.

Flock- a social web browser

Flock is a web browser that has integrated many of the popular social networking tools into it. It is firefox with added features like facebook, blogger, del.icio.us and in all 15 other social networking tools.


Blogging: It has a blogging tool which has amazing functionality when compared to the other blogging tools which are available on the net. There is no extra setup required. One is required to log on to their (blogger,wordpress,xanga,blogsome, livejournal,typepad or any other self-hosted blog) account and you can compose a blog entry through the browser. It has all the features like inserting an image, editing an old blog post and saving drafts and all the other features that any normal blog editor would have. What sets it apart is ease of usage and the functionality of the editor itself.

Mailing: Flock has only Gmail and Yahoo! mail integrated into it. It automatically checks the mail client for unread messages. To read or compose message it takes you to the concerned page on the mail client. One can have more than one mail account integrated.

Bookmarking: Flock has a built-in bookmarking tool. Other than that it also provides del.icio.us and magnolia integration which allows one to bookmark any site online.
Other features:

• Flock also has integration with flickr with which not only can one upload snaps directly but also can view the activity of their friends. One can also see their own albums and messages in the media bar.

• Flock enables integration with facebook and it comes with many functionalities of facebook.One can directly upload images and links into their profile directly from the side bar. One could message, poke, share media and links besides others. Facebook fanatics are sure to love this.

• One could also keep up to date with the twitter tool which is available in the browser. I am not much of a twitter user, but from what i gather it doesn't upload as fast as the other extensions (as Twitterrific) but does a decently good job.

• Youtube and the other media sharing sites photobucket, picasa and piczo are also available.

• It has an in built feed reader which does a decent job of retrieving the feeds and storing them locally. Any website which has a feed can easily be added to the feed reader with the feed icon which is placed near the left top corner of the browser.

People who are addicted to the whole social networking sphere would love flock with all the in built features. Even without all the tools, it looks better and is more stable than the firefox. All the drag and drop photo feature, blog editor and facebook tool are sure to win a few fans for flock. But with more and more websites flooding the social networking space it would be interesting to watch how flock will try to keep up its services. For now its a cooler and more 'social' browser that is creating a niche for itself in the otherwise flooded web browser space.

Nautanki.tv

I'm currently in Chennai and having a very hard time. The previous weekend, I went to an 'unconference' on podcasting called podwroks.in. I don't podcast and rarely listen to them, because of the bandwidth problems at my university. Most of the sessions weren't good, and made the unconference not worth attending. I found the sessions by one of the sponsors Nautanki.tv quite exciting. I had heard and read quite a bit about this Indian internet video site, but accessed it for the first time at Podworks.

Nautanki.tv is India's first internet Tv site. The content is produced specifically for the internet medium by directors. It is user driven , but not user generated content. It is more like Joost.com. They've got quite a lot of channels on humor, thrillers, news, short films, etc. I really loved their humor channel. The creators can make money from their channels by displaying advertisements before and after every show.

Online project management tool

Basecamp by 37signals is one of the best project management applications available online. I've used it for a project of mine and it makes managing data among team members really easy.


On the project page you can

1. upload files,
   
2. create task lists and allot them to people,
   
3. mark milestones and targets on the map,
   
4. discuss things on the whiteboard,
   
5. conference on the chat(not very comfortable though),
6. send messages to the group

Another useful data they show, is the group activity like when was each member's last login and last activity. One thing missing is collaborative working on docs, excel sheets etc. But other than that Basecamp is neat and easy to manage. Also you can host it on your own domain as well.


I used it for one my projects which required us to work from different places, and it really increased productivity. The number of meetings we had, to discuss things, decreased drastically.

Here's a screenshot of the project page from the tour. Click for a bigger picture.


If you were wondering how to work on the project with a team spread across the world, try this.

I've written two posts today, because my college year is nearly over. I probably won't be able to post anything for the next week because my PC and me will be traveling back, home :).

Good day!

Hot or not is now free!

This one's for the new Hugh McLeod, who knows math.

Hotornot is an unique dating site, where all the jazz of searching for similar tastes and interests are done away with. Instead you are shown pictures and you get to rate them on a scale from 1-10. If you click yes on a picture, then the next time they come online, they are shown your picture and if a match occurs, then a connection is made. Till recently you had to pay 5$ per month for mailing to connections, now you can do so without paying anything.



The creators of the site James and Jim have decided they've made enough money off people, so they ripped apart their business model and now make money only by displaying advertisements.

There are some 28,600,000 photos online, so you'll never run out of people. While I've never really tried making a connection, I've spent a lot of time, just rating people :). It's addictive!

Reality TV!

The web's first Reality show is here.

Justin.tv is the live video blog of Justin. He wears a camera 24 into 7. No, he's not chained to his house. He wears a headcam and the video is streamed on mobile network, which means he can go about normal life. On the website you can watch live-feed of what Justin is doing and chat with him or call him. The calendar serves as the TV guide and you can find out his plans for the next few days.

While he mostly goes around meeting other startups and web entrepreneurs, he also goes on dates sometimes. And when he goes on dates, their web traffic shoots up because everybody's asking, "Will he get lucky tonight?". And no Justin doesn't film when 'he's getting lucky' or in the bathroom. Right now Justin was sleeping and there were some 300 people watching him! Yeah, people love absolutely love reality tv.
Beside is the man, Justin Kan.


Here's the embedded channel from Justin.Tv.



Have fun!

addition: Live update. Justin and his crew just got the boot from their landlord!