Archive for November, 2007

EL DORADO, Kan. – A missing Kansas college student believed to be the victim of foul play led a double life as an Internet porn star by the name of Zoey Zane, a friend told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

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Gah, the current weather forcast includes moderate drama with occasional thunderstorms. People always wonder what causes the most grief? It’s not the notion that people have shoulders to cry on, or that they have their go-to guy or gal that they can spill all their inner angst to. It’s moreso that they need to make sure that those councilors are at least somewhat discreet. There’s some people you could tell anything to – but there’s others that are more useful to tell them something like “hey, can you keep this on the QT” if you really want it announced to the four corners of the universe (and probably blogged about as well).

Ok, if you’ve ever thought you might have had a tad bit of a disfunctional relationship, try this one out:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/05/14/news_pf/Tampabay/Clash_ends_in_stabbin.shtml

But the punchline isn’t so much the killing the guy w/ the samurai sword, but rather the post story commentary on the estranged husband and wife’s past run-ins with the law.

It’s like it snuck up on me – I know it shouldn’t have – but for some reason I totally thought I had an extra week in there between Thanksgiving and the 1st. But noooo, I just looked at the calendar and saw that the 1st is this upcoming Saturday. I could have sworn that there was more time, but here it is once again. Gah. Am I the only guy out there that has profoundly mixed emotions immediately around every birthday?

I’ve known plenty of women who handle it all manner of ways, but guys (more often than not) seem ambivilent in general. For me it just reminds me of how much I still have yet to get done, and how the clock is always running faster and faster. It’s almost a disservice to tell kids that you can do anything you want, when you don’t also teach them that they can’t do everything – just anything. I’ve never made peace with that notion yet, and hope I never will. So I’ve got to keep on cracking. Just crap, I thought I still had another week to warm up to the idea, but noooo.

So much to do, and so little time. Now it begins to make more sense as I think about it…

Crap.

I’ve been giving a fair amount of attention to Google’s OpenSocial platform over the past week. Here are some initial thoughts

• You can build OpenSocial apps as Google Gadgets or on your own.
• Gadgets can be easily added to iGoogle and Orkut. Not sure how other sites will handle these.
• Orkut, Ning, and Plaxo are the only sites which have exposed any OpenSocial data.
• Authentication can be done via authSubRequest where you receive a token back, or you can collect uname/pw and auth the user yourself server side.
• User data security is an issue: http://hyper.to/blog/link/opensocial-insecurity-no-user-to-app-authentication/
• Running issues list: http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-api/web/opensocial-issues-list

You have to apply to a host before anyone let’s you participate. Orkut let me in, but Plaxo didn’t let me participate. They suggested I build my app first, then get back to them. I haven’t tried Ning.

The OpenSocial libraries and data are very buggy right now. Google is quick to remind us we’re part of a closed beta. I’ve also read reports of people in different parts of the world having different experience with uptime. For me, I was able to add my test Gadget to Orkut’s sandbox environment and have it work, but it wouldn’t work as an iGoogle gadget.

Here’s a list of a few OpenSocial links for further reading:

• OS Issues List
• Social Design Best Practices
• Publishing your gadget
• OpenSocialAppList.com
• OpenSocialStuff.com – Developer Applications