Chris Wanstrathhttperrtheblogcom Defunkt And Leahhttpleahculvercom Did A Great Job At Last Nights Gilt Gr

December 3, 2009

Slug: chris-wanstrathhttperrtheblogcom-defunkt-and-leahhttpleahculvercom-did-a-great-job-at-last-nights-gilt-gr Date: 2009-12-03 Title: Vanity ending ‘e’ layout: post

Court Order For Digital Privacy

Slug: court-order-for-digital-privacy Date: 2009-12-02 Title: The Cloud, Digital Privacy, and Data Search Warrants layout: post I had a few thoughts in response to a twitter, um “thread” on cloud computing and privacy, with Chris Messina and James Governor.

Just as law enforcement must present a court-ordered search warrant in order to enter your home, there ought to be an equivalent for non-public electronic records. Imagine if you will, that when the government requested 8 million GPS records from Sprint, they were required to send a notification to every affected user a copy of a search warrant that included:

entity requesting the data
under whose authorization the warrant is issued
probable cause
specific search parameters (just as a normal warrant must describe property to be seized)
notification of the user’s rights under applicable law

Much of this ought to already be on a warrant somewhere in these cases. Seeing as how Sprint set up a custom government portal for this sensitive data, it should be easy to notify affected users. Thoughts?

Matt Mullenweg On Microblogging And Blogging

Slug: matt-mullenweg-on-microblogging-and-blogging Date: 2009-11-29 Title: Matt Mullenweg on Microblogging and Blogging layout: post

From My Starred Items

Slug: from-my-starred-items Date: 2009-11-29 Title: From My Starred Items layout: post While poking around Google Reader I thought I’d review my Starred Items, and found some gems:

“Now take a run through your […] blog. Makes you want to do better, right? Me, too.” – Brian Oberkirch on Anil Dash, after a recent run of awesome posts on his blog.

Then…

“For my own sake, Ive lately begun decreasing the distance between my real identity and my online persona, switching from @factoryjoe to @chrismessina on Twitter. While there are plenty of folks who know me by my digital moniker, there are far more who dont and shouldnt need to in order to interact with me.” – Chris Messina, in one of this many posts on identity, and part of my inspiration for switching to @steveivy on Twitter.

Brian again…

“Fame, greed, insecurity, opportunism. They go only so far. The greatest of these is love.” – Brian Oberkirch again.

After The Holidays Saturday Feels Like Monday Coffee Check Google Reader Check Editing A Wiki Page Check

Slug: after-the-holidays-saturday-feels-like-monday-coffee-check-google-reader-check-editing-a-wiki-page-check Date: 2009-11-28 Title: layout: post

Work For What You Love

Slug: work-for-what-you-love Date: 2009-11-25 Title: Work For What You Love layout: post

So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. – Genesis 29:20

James Governor has a good post up today about his 7-year wait to acquire the redmonk.net domain (my telling of the story is over here). While I’ll try to avoid getting into a temporal loop of mutual admiration, I liked James’ post and it made me think of a principle that is both savvy business strategy and Biblically sound. Bonus! There are things worth working - and waiting - for. For those not raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Jacob was the immediate forefather of the tribes of Israel. In his youth, he fell in love with a shepherdess named Rachel. Rachel’s father, Jacob’s uncle, agreed to let Jacob marry her in exchange for 7 years of service. The story gets all kinds of complicated, but the verse above describes Jacob’s feelings on the matter. He was quite willing to put in the time and effort to achieve a goal, because it was important. Some may chide me for “giving in” to James’ persistence in the case of redmonk.net. There are other, sound, business principles at play there, but I like thinking about this one: this was important to James, and he was willing to work for it. He wasn’t nasty about it - no threatening emails, letters, lawyers (which he probably could have better afforded). Just respect and persistence. We don’t always get what we’re looking for, in life or in business. But if you find something important, don’t be afraid to wait for it. It doesn’t have to consume you 100%, but keep at it, you never know when the right lines are going to cross.

Weird Morning Brain I Used To Think That When I Got To Be My Grandparents Age I Would Think And Act Like They Do Now This

Slug: weird-morning-brain-i-used-to-think-that-when-i-got-to-be-my-grandparents-age-i-would-think-and-act-like-they-do-now-this Date: 2009-11-25 Title: layout: post

Simplicity And The 10foot Ui

Slug: simplicity-and-the-10foot-ui Date: 2009-11-25 Title: Simplicity and the 10-foot UI layout: post

Faced With The Urge To Write And Nothing To Write About

Slug: faced-with-the-urge-to-write-and-nothing-to-write-about Date: 2009-11-25 Title: layout: post

Status Autodiscovery Relstatus

Slug: status-autodiscovery-relstatus Date: 2009-11-24 Title: Status Autodiscovery (rel=status) layout: post

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS"
      href="url/to/rss/file">

7 or so years ago, the web community pretty much finalized the way that we were going to link from an HTML page to a subscription formatted version of same. This was called RSS Autodiscovery and it made the jump from “wow I like this person’s writing” to “I want to read everything this person writes here” a one-step process. Later on we added a variant for Atom feeds:

 <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml"
       href="url/to/atom/file">

I was thinking this morning, while tending my garden of subscriptions, that it would be nice if Jeremy Keith’s website could tell me his Twitter handle as well as his feed location. (Yes, I know it’s @adactio - it’s an example, ok?) This got me thinking about autodiscovery, and, as I mentioned in my tweet, to an implementation idea:

<link rel="status" type="text/html"
      href="http://twitter.com/steveivy" title="twitter">

It’s not just for Twitter:

<link rel="status" type="text/html"
      href="http://identi.ca/steveivy" title="status.net">

[Update] And, lastly, combined with rel=me for identity consolidation (thanks Jeremy):

<link rel="me status" type="text/html"
      href="http://twitter.com/steveivy" title="twitter">

This would make the process of getting from “I like this person’s writing” to “I want to follow this person’s status updates” a much shorter distance. This is about the simplest possible implementation - I can also imagine adding this sort of information into the web of meta-documents - but this gets us there today. I’d like to see support for this (or something like it) built into Tweetie, Seesmic, etc. Just as feed autodiscovery let us just paste just about any blog url into a feed reader to subscribe to an author’s blog, status autodiscovery could do the same for following their status updates. P.S. The rel value could be applied to normal hyperlinks as well:

<a href="http://twitter.com/steveivy"
   title="me on twitter" rel="status">@steveivy</a>

I have no idea what that would be used for, but that’s why I have smart readers like you. P.P.S. I’ve added my twitter status <link> to this site. P.P.P.S. Added rel=me version thanks to Jeremy’s reminder, and added to the microformats wiki on rel brainstorming.