Feb 21, 2007
On Attending the Future of Web Apps Conference, day two
(A work in progress)
Lunchtime, and I’m just taking a moment to reflect on the morning’s presentations before downloading (or should that be uploading?) my notes and thoughts on what was said.
Actually, I’m listening to ear-shattering volume AIR in an attempt to block out the drone of multiple mobile conversations – the perils of locking geeks up in a room for a while is that when they get out they need to connect with technology again – I imagine that it’s about a billion times worse at 3GSM, only with suits, to boot).
In brief: Khoi Vinh, the Design Director for the New York Times, was a real highlight. I took copious notes and will do something useful with them a bit later.
Simon Willison also rocked people’s socks off with his illuminating, engaging talk on OpenID – spookily timely, given the recent announcements about OpenID support by people like Digg and Microsoft. Oh, and AOL ;)
No time for links now – must hustle back to my seat in the gallery. But not before noting that the guy on his laptop next to me is interacting with it in much the same way that a pianist would interact with a big concerto. Everyone is master of an instrument in some way. It’s funny, because it’s true.
Don’t the 3GSM suits have mind-reading phones these days so no buzz?
AOL using OpenID is a great step forward, because it’s mainstream users here getting something as part of a widespread service. My one worry is this – I have OpenID from Livejournal, VOX and a couplea other places. But can I remember which ID I used in which place? No…
(PS: AOL also lovely for giving my friend a job covering as their lifestyle editor!)
Oh yes? Who’s that?
Jo Montgomery – think she’s covering for someone on maternity leave.
But you won’t be colleagues for that much longer given the pre-holiday list you posted on Flickr…
I’m really surprised that nobody’s done much with the AOL OpenID support in general. Everyone expects you to type in a full URL – but why not just get users to click which service they use (WordPress, AIM, Livejournal etc) and enter their username? Much lower barrier to entry for average users.
We’re going to be releasing a small, free Javascript service to let people add this kind of thing to their site easily. OpenID is awesome; I just wish people would pick it up and use it to its proper potential, rather than leaving it as this thing that you’ve got to be a bit of a geek to understand.